Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Ms. Spell by Ethan Long - OPTIONAL

Long, Ethan   Ms. Spell  38 pgs. Holiday House, 2015. $15.95. PICTURE BOOK

With a magic wand, and lots of spelling tips, Ms. Spell makes a spelling lesson fun, then crazy, then a bit dangerous. As she helps kids spell some tricky words like "there", "their", and "they're", she also has them use the words in sentences. Then, "poof" and "spella-kazam", she turns their sentences into reality. The result is a somewhat awkward combination of silliness and dry spelling rules. 

Cluttered with speech bubbles and spelling tips in the margins, the book will not work well as a read-aloud, but perhaps a student reading it independently will find the silliness helpful in remembering some of the spelling rules. However, it just left me wondering why any teacher would use her incredibly cool magic wand only to bring to life every crazy and dangerous sentence the kids think up.

EL - OPTIONAL. 

Reviewed by P.K.Foster, teacher- librarian

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