I'm Sad

I'm Sad by Michael Ian Black
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a FANTASTIC book about sadness/grief. It's OK to feel sad, it won't last forever, and different things make different people/animals/potatoes feel better. There is some humor, too, although I don't quite want to "shelve" it as humor. But it did make my coworker laugh out loud, which is what brought the book to my attention in the first place!

The illustrations are outstanding--similar to Mo Willems in the way that a few lines and relatively simple drawings perfectly capture the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of these three friends.

My only quibble is that the wrong verb tense is used on one page, which is a pet peeve of mine. It should say, "If I WERE an astronaut, I would never be sad." Not "was." Copy editors should have caught this mistake. It's an "unreal conditional." Yes, I know I'm a big grammar nerd, but clarity and accuracy matters in language/communication!

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Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference!

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference! by Lynne Truss

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Lynne Truss has adapted her semi-famous book Eats, Shoots, & Leaves into three picture books (so far). What a great way to visually illustrate the impact punctuation has on the meaning of sentences! The rules really are quite simple and greatly enhance communication, and yet so many people screw them up constantly. This book puts the same sentence side by side on facing pages but changes the commas and uses illustrations to demonstrate the different meanings. Then at the end, there are two pages that give a little more info about the rules for each version of each sentence.

The only sentence pair I didn't like was the one with the squinting modifier about the boy & the duck: "Becky teased the boy with the fluffy duck./Becky teased the boy, with the fluffy duck." The second option just feels wrong to me. "With the fluffy duck" is a fragment. In real life, if I had to use that sentence, I probably would have rewritten it to say, "Becky used the fluffy duck to tease the boy." Surely Truss could have picked a better example?

Ah well, the rest of the examples are good. And readers young and old will enjoy the funny drawings by Bonnie Timmons. Readers will also enjoy Truss's other picture books, The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage Without Apostrophes! and Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, Every Punctuation Mark Counts!.



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