Sparkle and Spin: A book about words by Ann and Paul Rand

Through harmony and rhythm, resonance and pitch, Ann Rand inspires readers to listen to the tuneful play of her text as it sings off each page. Illustrated with graphic designer Paul Rand’s colorful, witty artwork, Sparkle and Spin is a children’s classic (now happily available again through Chronicle Books) that reveals to young readers the power and music in the words they use every day. Sparkle and Spin takes readers on a delightful journey through the fascinating world of words. Readers will explore homophones, interjections, adjectives, verbs, and more. Written in rhythmic verse, this book is an enjoyable read-aloud.

 "What are words?  Words are how what you think inside comes out and 

how to remember what you might forget about."

In the US lots of schools are posting videos on social media about the end of year library inventory. This process often includes 'gardening' (I like that term way better than the word 'weeding'). What are some criteria for this: age of the book, condition of the book, frequency of loans, currency of content, overall child appeal.

If age of the book is a criteria, then this book is one I might not have found in a library. Prepare to be shocked! Sparkle and Spin was first published in 1957. Okay do not panic - I am reading the 2006 reprint but wow this sure is an old book. Has it been borrowed from the library - yes nine times between 2007 when it was purchased and now. How did I discover this book? Kids find books in libraries when they can see covers. The library where I volunteer changes their book displays - weekly, fortnightly and twice each term Sparkle and Spin is a picture book but it is one of thousands. The display of 'word play' books gave Sparkle and Spin a couple of weeks 'in the sun'. If you do by chance have the 1957 edition of Sparkle and Spin I have seen copies for sale for over $1000!

Paul Rand (1914-1996) was an American commercial artist who, together with his wife Ann, produced four picture books combining rhythmic verse with illustrations exhibiting Paul's interest in Swiss Style graphic design. Rand is best known for his corporate logo designs. Here is another book by Ann and Paul Rand - Listen Listen!

If you are thinking about words and word play I found this terrific chart on my friend's Pinterest page:

When I saw the date on Sparkle and Spin, I also thought of this treasured book from 1961 which I had in my previous library - sadly I am sure that by now someone will have tossed it away - what a pity - this book contains fabulous retro illustrations and it is such a funny book to share. I now also discover there was a companion volume called Writing!

See inside this book here

Here are some other books about words:

What a wonderful word

Weird and Wonderful world of Words

Charlotte's Web by EB White illustrated by Garth Williams

“Attention, please!” he said in a loud, firm voice. “Will the party who addressed me at bedtime last night kindly make himself or herself known by giving an appropriate sign or signal!”

Wilbur has been wishing, out loud, for a friend. Charlotte quietly says she will be his friend, and she tells Wilbur she will meet him the morning. The lines above are from Wilbur - and yes it is the next morning. He wants to find the owner of the voice from last night. Wilbur is about to meet the most special friend - a spider named Charlotte. 

You are sure to remember the classic opening lines of Charlotte's Web:

Where's Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. “Out to the hoghouse,” replied Mrs. Arable. “Some pigs were born last night.” “I don’t see why he needs an ax,” continued Fern, who was only eight. “Well,” said her mother, “one of the pigs is a runt. It’s very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.” “Do away with it?” shrieked Fern. “You mean kill it? Just because it’s smaller than the others?”

Think about the fact that Fern is eight years old. When she confronts her father about the new baby pig she sure does use some sophisticated and persuasive language:

“But it’s unfair,” cried Fern. “The pig couldn’t help being born small, could it? If I had been very small at birth, would you have killed me?” Mr. Arable smiled. “Certainly not,” he said, looking down at his daughter with love. “But this is different. A little girl is one thing, a little runty pig is another.” “I see no difference,” replied Fern, still hanging on to the ax. “This is the most terrible case of injustice I ever heard of.”

Fern is also a farm kid. She goes inside and mum has breakfast ready and one of the offerings is bacon! I guess only adults will see this as a little ironic.

EB White is a master of sensory descriptions - take a look at this example:

It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell—as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world. It smelled of grain and of harness dressing and of axle grease and of rubber boots and of new rope. And whenever the cat was given a fish-head to eat, the barn would smell of fish. But mostly it smelled of hay, for there was always hay in the great loft up overhead.

You could also talk to your writing group about the way EB White makes use of lists in this story:

it was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders, grindstones, pitch forks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps.

Flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies, tasty cockroaches, gnats, midges, daddy longlegs, centipedes, mosquitoes, crickets—anything that is careless enough to get caught in my web. I have to live, don’t I?

It was a delicious meal—skim milk, wheat middlings, leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll, a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of raspberry jello.

Here, in a small clearing hidden by young alders and wild raspberry bushes, was an astonishing pile of old bottles and empty tin cans and dirty rags and bits of metal and broken bottles and broken hinges and broken springs and dead batteries and last month’s magazines and old discarded dishmops and tattered overalls and rusty spikes and leaky pails and forgotten stoppers and useless junk of all kinds, including a wrong-size crank for a broken ice-cream freezer.

I participate in a children's book club on Facebook and the book for June was Charlotte's Web. I'm fairly sure I didn't read this 1952 book as a child - I think I probably first read it in the 1980s. Today, in preparation for participating in the discussion I re-read Charlotte's Web on my bus trip into the city and then finished the final half this afternoon.

I was very surprised about the parts of the story that I had forgotten, and I was also surprised that I didn't have my expected emotional reaction to the death of beautiful Charlotte. This might be my third reading of this classic book. I did talk about Charlotte's Web here on this blog back in 2012. In that past post I shared some text quotes. Today I read this book on my Kindle so I was easily able to highlight passages that resonated with me - and they are quite different from the ones in my previous post. 

There are some rich words used in this book such as these examples: endure, objectionable, meekly, salutations, a jubilee time, sincere, scruples, compunctions, gullible, forsake, and untenable.

And also some words that are sure to be unfamiliar to young Australian children - wheat middlings, popover, midway, hominy, provender, timothy (it's a type of grass used for hay), and Crackerjack.

I had also forgotten the maths references - money given to the children at the fair and the exact number of eggs in Charlotte's egg sack.

Here is another quote that resonated with me:

Wilbur was modest; fame did not spoil him. He still worried some about the future, as he could hardly believe that a mere spider would be able to save his life. Sometimes at night he would have a bad dream. He would dream that men were coming to get him with knives and guns. But that was only a dream. In the daytime, Wilbur usually felt happy and confident. No pig ever had truer friends, and he realized that friendship is one of the most satisfying things in the world.

Companion books:

Aranea

Some Writer

Here are the famous Charlotte's Web quotes that you are sure to recognise:

“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

One Word and a Bird by Stephen Michael King

"I was a long way from home and searching for a word, a big word to make me feel ... "

Or can he find an important word or a high-spirited word or a comforting word.

The boy has ideas about this word - he has such a rich vocabulary presumably from reading. Look closely you can see him reading a book as he walks across the landscape of the title page. 

This book has a repeated story structure which will make it a delight to read aloud. Along the way your young reading companion will hear so many rich words such as humongous, gargantuan, auspicious, magnanimous, dynamic and courageous. These words match the things he sees on his journey but they are not quite the right fit. In fact it almost feels as though the boy does not notice his surroundings even when the things he walks past are enormous and amazing.  Where is he going? What is he looking for? 

Also along the way, various 'friends' appear - a small bird, a little dog, a horse, and even a tiny snail. He greets each one with kindness and we see his new companions joining him on several beautiful wordless spreads. These are the quiet pages that will allow you as a reader to stop, pause, slow down and experience the wonders of the night sky. Watch as the story moves from dusk, to evening, to a stormy night and finally to the dawn.

This is a book you might overlook but can I recommend you take the time to pick it up and read it through a few times - slowly. And then find a group of children and share this book with them.  This story is sure to generate some great discussions with your library group. One Word and a Bird was published in April 2025, so I expect to see it listed as a 2026 CBCA notable title.

Here are the teachers notes from Scholastic Australia. I actually like the last question posed in these notes: What can this book teach us about life and what is important? If you had to choose the one most important thing that this book can teach us, what would it be?

This is a multi-layered story that will mean different things to different readers and can be interpreted in myriad ways. King has created an original narrative that uses powerful language and enchanting illustrations to prompt young people aged 4+ to think about what is important to them, why friendship is necessary, and how serendipity can play out in curious and surprising ways. However, in the end, like with all good journeys, the road leads home. The conclusion here is both foreseeable and heartfelt. Books and Publishing

Companion books:

Phileas's fortune

One Word from Sophia

The Word Collector

I am a huge fan of Stephen Michael King - especially of his earliest books:

Where does Thursday go?

Beetle Soup

Tishkin Silk

Henry and Amy

Amelia Ellicott's Garden

Three

Applesauce and the Christmas Miracle

Bear and Rat

The Dictionary Story by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston

"It looks like a real dictionary," says Jeffers. 

"But if you pay close attention, you'll see that all of the definitions have been rewritten."

Is a dictionary a story? Does the dictionary want to tell a story? Is that why the title here has been changed from A Dictionary to The Dictionary Story? And who are those characters peeping out at the side? I spy a walrus, an alligator, a ghost, a queen, the moon, a donut, and a Viking. Now flip to the back cover and an alligator is staring at a zebra but the dictionary definitions have been reversed.

Zebra: A wild animal that looks like a small horse with black or brown and white stripes on its body. Likes hiding out at the back of dictionaries. Dislikes sudden surprises (see alligator).

Alligator: A large reptile that looks like a crocodile. Alligators have thick skin with many hard bumps. They live in rivers, lakes and swamps and swim with their babies in their mouths. They also have a special fondness for baked sugary snacks.

Peel back the dust jacket. The blue cloth cover has an embossed alligator on the front cover and an embossed zebra on the back cover. I adore these extra features. So much care has gone into the design of this book and wait until you see the end papers!

At first glance the end papers look like pages from a dictionary but then you realise the words are not in alphabetical order. The bold words actually form a sentence:

The first words were born inside our heads where they wriggled around a long time and slowly crawled out of our mouths and into the ears of other people. Like words writing was a bit hit in no time at all there were secret notes ride jokes and graffiti all over the place. This explosion of words meant we needed to find a new home for all these tiny marks. People soon realised it would be useful to have a book explain this type of thing that book was called a dictionary.

Dictionary: A book full of words and their meanings. The words are set out in alphabetical order and generally stay put, although, when things get a bit dull, they sometimes have a little shuffle and a new story pops out.

Story: A description of events either real or imagined. Some stories are told with words, others use pictures and lots of them get copied into books. Books carry stories around until someone like you finds them a home in their imagination.

There are two layers to The Dictionary Story. The blurb below describes the plot which is presented in a hand-written font and involves all those characters from the cover. Meanwhile each page also has dictionary extracts but these need close reading because they contain way more than usual dry definitions. I can certainly see why this book took seven years to create.

And, by the way, the story itself is fun. While a lot of thought and work and planning went into making it, at its heart The Dictionary Story is just a good old fashioned 

chase story with a lot of chaos and a heartwarming ending 
(can Dictionary put herself back together? Maybe with a little help from some friends!) NPR interview

Here is another example:

Underpants: A piece of clothing that goes from the top of your legs to your waits. Some people decide to wear them on top of heads but that very rarely works out well.

When I saw The Dictionary Story in a London bookshop, I was very keen to buy and read it. Luckily, I had a $10 voucher for one of our Sydney Independant bookstores (Abbeys). Many school libraries here in Australia will now have this book because it was sent out by Australian Standing Orders (Scholastic Australia) as a title in their international pack. You could compare the ASO teachers notes with these from the publisher Walker Books. You can hear Sam and Oliver talking about their book here. 

Bookseller blurb:  Dictionary wishes she could tell a story just like the other books. So one day she decides to bring her words to life. How exciting it is to finally have an adventure on her very own pages! But what will she do when everything gets out of control—all in a jumble—and her characters collide, causing the most enormous tantrum to explode. This isn’t what she wanted at all! How on earth will she find sense in all this chaos? Her friend Alphabet knows exactly what to do and sings a song that brings calm and order to Dictionary’s pages once again.

Unimaginable care has been taken with the very real handmade books that visibly bookend the story (the dictionary is noticeably worse for wear by the end). Meanwhile, pages are filled to the brim with tiny details for eyes both young and old to find and enjoy ... With hijinks and hilarity hidden on every page, this is a sweet, strange, wordy tale bound to delight all who pick it up. Kirkus Star review

Sam Winston’s and Oliver Jeffers’ pictures and storytelling are sublime. This pair’s imagination and presentation are outstanding so that readers need to spend time lingering through the pages before beginning the book all over again. ...  Then again, the quality of this production is gorgeous. It means that The Dictionary Story is a superb choice for reading together, exclaiming and discovering, but alone too. What’s more, it’s a fantastic gift book. Altogether we love and recommend this book wholeheartedly. Bookwagon

The very best words by Erin Munro illustrated by Sarah Trolle

Emma has a new baby brother. He can't talk yet, so she decides to help him find the very best words. Over the year - each month - Emma shares words with James. And by the end of a whole year, at his first birthday, James says his first words back to Emma.

This book would be an absolutely perfect present for a family with a new baby. I have a Pinterest of picture books for families with a new baby brother or sister. At the back of the book there is a word list with brief definitions - I found a new word - susurration (a soft whisper or murmur). The list also includes some of my own favourite words - bamboozle; flibbertigibbet; winndershins; collywobbles; and kerfuffle. Of course, the most important word of all is love!

See inside this book here. This is a picture book from New Zealand. It is published by Little Moa. 

Sarah Trolle (pronounced Tro-lay) is a primary school teacher and illustrator living near Kina Beach in Nelson, New Zealand. She has always loved painting, drawing and printmaking, and from a young age was inspired by writers and illustrators such as Margaret Mahy, Joy Cowley, Shirley Hughes, Raymond Briggs, Jan Pienkowski and Julie Vivas. She now spends a lot of her time teaching and creating art with children. You can find Sarah on instagram @SarahJTrolle.

Erin Munro (author) is a content and copywriter by day and can be found working from a local cafe, or her home while the family is out. Working with words keeps her imagination running wild, and she now carries around a notebook to keep track of fun words she comes across - the current favourite is dandelion. The very best words is her debut picture book. 

Pepi Sings a new Song by Laura Ljungkvist

Pepi the parrot loves to sing but his friend Peter is getting tired of the same old song, based on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so Pepi heads off to find new inspiration.

At the baker he finds words like: cookie cutter; rolling pin; whisk and dough. In the music studio he tries out a xylophone; flue; trombone and violin. Art art studio is filled with wonderful objects: a canvas; some clay; an easel; and colours such as chartreuse and cobalt. And so the journey continues with a visit to the market and time at the dog park.

Pepi now has a wealth of new words to incorporate into his song.

Twinkle, twinkle, little flute,

Poodle, xylophone, cobalt, fruit.

Carrot, saxophone, icing, bow,

Violet, terrier, canvas, dough.

Blurb: Pepi the parrot is ready for a new song. So he decides to step out into the neighbourhood to find some exciting things to sing about. He discovers yummy things (sprinkles! icing! dough!) at the bakery, colorful things (paint! clay! easel!) at the artist's studio, and musical things (maracas! drums! guitar!) at the instrument shop. And then he puts them all together to create a song everyone will want to join in on. From acclaimed picture book creator Laura Ljungkvist, here is a delightful read-aloud romp that celebrates community, creativity, and the fun of learning new words.

Sadly I have to report this book is out of print but it might be in a school library here in Australia because it is a title on the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge book list for Years 3 and 4.  Actually that seems a little odd to me - I think this book would be thoroughly enjoyed by younger children in Year 1 and 2. If you can find this book it would be fun to share it with a group of very young children and I would also recommend putting this book into the hands of your school music teacher. You can see inside this book here.  You can see Laura's art (for adults) here. 

The digital art utilizes expanses of flat color and shaped, controlled line in elegant ways and with a distinctly Modern aesthetic. Kirkus

The library I visit each week continues to use date due slips inside their books. I was quite excited to see that since 2011 this book has been borrowed over thirty times. 

Laura Ljungkvist is from Sweden but since 1993 she has lived in New York City.  Here are a few of her other, very special books:

Book Covers from Laura Ljungkvist Children's Portfolio

I was surprised and somewhat delighted to discover Laura illustrated a book by the famous Australian author Mem Fox:

An Interesting Word for Every day of the Year by Dr Meredith L Rowe and Monika Forsberg

This is a book I would like to gift to every classroom (Grades 1, 2 and 3).  In my former school library I used to display a word of the week and when we installed a new computer catalogue I would issue a word challenge to Grade 3 each week where they had to use my word of the week in an exciting sentence and then we published the best entries on our catalogue homepage for the whole school community to read, enjoy and perhaps even discover a new word or two.

There are 52 weeks of words (365 words) in this book spread over 105 pages.  There is also a full index if you need to refer to a specific word or share an illustration of a particular word with your class. Many of the illustrations are very funny.  

Here is the blurb from Walker Books: Each fully illustrated scene provides a fun and supportive platform to introduce little readers to big words and extend their vocabulary, which studies have recently proven to be the biggest indicator of a child’s potential later in life. Curated by a literacy expert, these 365 aspirational words will fire your child’s imagination, help them label their emotions and expand their comprehension. Each word is explained beneath in simple language to aid understanding and inspire a love of language.

There are no unfamiliar words in this book for me as an adult reader to discover but there are sure to be plenty of new words to share with a class.  Here are a few examples:

gratuitous; meagre; voracious; unfathomable;sabotage; obstinate; perilous; inconspicuous; and succumb.

Take a look at the art of Swedish illustrator Monika Forsberg (she now lives in London). You can see inside this book here.

The War I finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Publisher blurb: When Ada’s clubfoot is surgically fixed at last, she knows for certain that she’s not what her mother said she was—damaged, deranged, crippled mentally as well as physically. She’s not a daughter anymore, either. Who is she now?

World War II rages on, and Ada and her brother, Jamie, move with their guardian, Susan, into a cottage with the iron-faced Lady Thorton and her daughter, Maggie. Life in the crowded home is tense. Then Ruth moves in. Ruth, a Jewish girl, from Germany. A German? Could Ruth be a spy?

As the fallout from war intensifies, calamity creeps closer, and life during wartime grows even more complicated. Who will Ada decide to be? How can she keep fighting? And who will she struggle to save?

I loved catching up again with Ada. Even though I read The War that Saved my Life in mid 2016 much of the story still lingers with me. Kimberly Brubaker Bradley gives her readers just enough back story for readers like me, who may have waited a while between episodes. It is not essential to read both books but I really think you should do this so you can appreciate the life journey of Ada. Both of these books give deep personal insights into the struggles, compassion, maturity, kindness and courage of a very special young girl living through deeply turbulent times - turbulent because of the war but also turbulent because her early life was utterly deplorable.

I read The War I finally Won in almost one sitting. Yes, here we go again, it is THAT GOOD.

Thoughtful, brave, true, and wise beyond her years, Ada is for the ages—as is this book. Wonderful. Kirkus Star Review

Bradley sweeps us up in the story she’s telling and at the same time raises hard questions and makes us think — even as she moves us to tears.  Horn Book

A most readable and enthralling story for this age group, this is a thoughtful and wise book, well worth adding to the canon of World War II fiction for middle grade readers. Minerva Reads

It is exactly what a World War Two book should be - both horrifying by turns and yet also uplifting and glorious. Book Bag

A truly important part of buying books for yourself or for a young reading companion comes when you can have faith in the recommendations made by a book seller.  I guess in any store we hope and expect the shop assistant or shop manager to have extensive knowledge of the products they sell but this is even more complex when you are a bookseller because these people are expected to have actually read the books and to remember their contents and, in the case of children's books, sometimes make age recommendations too.  I am going to say all of this is a huge responsibility and no one bookseller can read everything in the shop but it is good to have some confidence that the seller is also a reader. When I purchased The war I finally Won from Beachside Bookshop. The young lady who works in the store exclaimed with huge excitement.  She LOVED reading this book and said it was even better than the first instalment and she was THRILLED I planned to read it too.  This level of enthusiasm is something very special that book lovers share.

Take a look at all the award given to The War I finally Won:

• New York Times bestseller
• Boston Globe Best of the Year
• Hornbook Fanfare 2017
• Kirkus Best Books of the Year
• Barnes and Noble Best Books of the Year
• Washington Post Best Children’s Books of the Year
• Amazon Best Books of the Year
• California Young Reader’s Medal

You can read an extract on the publisher web site. Finally here is an odd confession. The War I finally Won was published in 2018 so you might wonder why it took me until the end of 2020 to read it. Back in 2018 I purchased the ebook version of this (Kindle) but I am just not a fan of device reading unless I am forced to adapt to this due to travel. Anyway I kept putting off reading the ebook and then when I was Christmas book shopping for some young adults a few days before Christmas I saw The War I finally Won on the shelf and well - the rest is history!

On of the things I adore about researching for this blog is the way I make incidental discoveries. I now find that Kimberly Brubaker Bradley wrote another book I enjoyed many years ago - The Lacemaker and the Princess. It was published in 2007 just prior to my blog start date.

Finally a BIG announcement which is for people who have read this post right to the bottom of the page! I have nearly reached my target of 2000 posts - six more to go. I will talk about the ideas behind this blog later in the week but when I started late in 2008 I set myself a target of one post per week or about 200 per year. This year I have completed over 400 posts so I am well ahead with my target of 2000 posts which I expected to reach in March 2021.

Image Source: "Target Flat Icon.svg from Wikimedia Commons by Videoplasty.com, CC-BY-SA 4.0"

Phileas's fortune a story about self expression by Agnes de Lestrade illustrated by Valeria Docampo

Tuesday Treasure

In the world of this story words are made in a factory. The words are then sold in shops and boutiques. "People must buy and swallow the words they need to speak." The factory churns out words of all kinds day and night but some words are very valuable and cost more money than others. The poor people of the town often have to scavenge for words in the trash and these are usually dull and uninteresting words. Words that go on sale are usually useless too often because they are so old-fashioned. Very occasionally, though, special words can be found floating the air. Phileas has a net for word catching. He has collected three special words and he has plans to share them with Cybele for her birthday.

Phileas wishes he could just say Hello, how are you? and Happy Birthday ... but he doesn't have those words. And deep in his heart he also wishes he could say I love you - but he hasn't saved enough money for those precious words. All he can do is smile when he sees Cybele. 

On the day of her birthday Phileas sees Cybele on the stairs. Just as he is about to share his three precious words Oscar jumps in and blurts out 17 loud words declaring HIS love for Cybele. Phileas feels defeated but he has so much love in his heart.

"He utters his words. Off they float to Cybele like beautiful butterflies. 

cherry! 

ruby!

chimes!

Cybele stops smiling and looks right at Phileas. She doesn't have any words to use, so instead she gently and softly kisses Phileas's cheek."

Remember Phileas had three words. He actually has one more - the perfect word to use right now - the word again!

I have mentioned Phileas's fortune in a number posts recently so I wanted give you more details about this gentle love story. You can see the whole book here. Take a look at this French theatre production based on this book - it looks amazing! Phileas's fortune has been translated into 20 languages. I am happy to say this book from 2010 is still in print. My copy came from a wonderful school library but I had added Phileas's fortune to my own book shopping list.

Phileas's fortune was originally published in French with the title La grande fabrique de mots. The English language edition is translated by Julia Frank-Neil. Valeria Docampo comes from Argentina - you can see some her other books on her web site.

The Magic of Letters by Tony Johnston and Wendell Minor

 

This would be the perfect book to read to a Kindergarten class half way through their first year at school when they have already spent some time untangling the mysteries of the letters and their sounds in English.  Teachers could also base their classroom displays on ideas in this book such as a wall of the children's names, a truck filled with words from street signs, shops, newspapers and advertisements. There are also words in this book to add to a word wall - acrobat, clunk, trout and flibbertigibbet! What about the word quesadilla?

Image source and recipe from Taste

Then there are special words such as enchanted. Perhaps you can even put all the new words together:

"The flibbertigibbet ate an enchanted quesadilla and became an acrobat who slipped on a trout - clunk!"

Given the sophistication of some of the words in the story, it is best read with slightly older kindergarteners. ...  A charming ode to the lyricism of language. Kirkus

Click here to see some other books illustrated by Wendell Minor.

I read one reviewer who suggested pairing this book with Z is for Moose.