Muhammad shows Abdul his own messy notebook, and Abdul, who is left-handed, decides to try writing without erasing. Muhammad-a Black man with a flattop haircut like Abdul’s and whose sneakers, like Abdul’s, have “not a single crease or scuff”-is a writer who urges the students to “write new stories with new superheroes.” Abdul feels motivated to give writing another shot, but again he ends up with endless erasure marks and smudges. One day, a visitor comes to Abdul’s class Mr. Abdul decides that his stories are not for books. But whenever he tries to write down his stories in a notebook, spelling rules confuse him, and his “scribbly, scratchy, scrawly letters” never stay on the lines. 4-6)Ī young Black boy struggles with writing-until a special guest visits his class.Ībdul loves to tell stories about the people in his neighborhood, and his friends at school love hearing them. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue-Mother Pig’s lines are italicized-adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense.
Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “ Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “ Pirates don’t get seasick either. Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother.
0 kommentar(er)
