Lee Bennet Hopkins Poetry Review — A Bunch of Punctuation — Hopkins and Bloch

on

 A Bunch of Punctuation

Compiled by Lee Bennet Hopkins and Illustrated by Serge Bloch

A light blue book cover "A Bunch of Punctuation" with poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Serge Bloch. There is a white dog with a semi-colon as its nose and chin. There are three speech bubbles coming from the dog (one is yellow, one is pink, and one is red) with various punctuation marks: colons, semi-colons, periods, parenthesis, quotation marks, a hyphen, a dash, an exclamation point, and a question mark. 

Bibliography:
Hopkins, L. B., & Bloch, S. (2018). A bunch of punctuation. WordSong, an imprint of Highlights.

Summary:
A Bunch of Punctuation is a collection of poems by multiple authors: Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, Charles Ghigna, Allan Wolf, Alice Schertle, Julie Larios, J. Patrick Lewis, Michele Krueger, Jane Yolen, Prince Redcloud, Joan Bransfield Graham, and Betsy Franco. The poems focus on different punctuation marks and use wordplay to explain how to use the punctuation as well as provide contextual examples to deepen understanding of that usage. Serge Bloch's illustrations provide a visual story-telling element for each poem.

Analysis:
The poems selected for this collection are all relevant to punctuation, whether this is explaining the use of the punctuation through playful rhymes and wordplay or just describing the feeling of the punctuation from a personified point of view. The distinct illustrations throughout the book provide great characterization for each subject punctuation mark. Block uses the punctuation marks themselves to form the shapes of different people and animals to match the theme of each poem, which brings a fun visual element to enhance the words on every page. 

Overall, the subject matter of the poems are very light-hearted and simply entertaining and fun to read. This book would be a great aid for anyone looking for additional elements to insert a bit of humor and nonsense (nonsense in the sense of being unserious, not useless) into any curriculum about grammar and punctuation. 

Excerpt:
Apostrophe by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

I'm flattered to be popular.
People love to use me.
But now I'll have to set you straight.
I hope that you'll excuse me.

I'm a sign of ownership
when I hang out with s.
If you see my sister's room,
you'll see my sister's mess.

I'm good at joining little words.
Could not changes to couldn't.
They are turns into they're.
Should not switches to shouldn't.

If you read and write, my friend,
it's your job to care
about me—small apostrophe—
for I work hard up there.

Use me to show possession.
Let me make contractions.
Don't just stick me anywhere—
or I'll create distractions.

Activity Idea:
The example poem for the book lends itself to be the perfect setup for an exercise on how to use apostrophes correctly. The poem acts as an introduction and explanation of how apostrophes are used and this can be expanded on with an activity about building contractions. This can be done with a white board and markers. The instructor of the activity would write out words that are typically in contractions (i.e. should, would, can, not, have) and ask the children what contractions can be made through a raise of hands. Their answers can then be written down on the board for everyone to see. To give the activity some "southern fun," the instructor can ask the class how to make a contraction out of "you all would have," looking for the answer, "y'all'd've." You can also get them to reverse this thinking by having them translate that contraction (or others) into the original statement.    

Comments

Post a Comment