Portis gets five stars for making a book about bird calls that includes the phrases "we'll mind our peeps and coos" and "lost caws".Oh how I love the silliness of this book. Everyone knows that cats go "meow" and dogs go "woof" and crows go "caw" and little brown birds go "peep". But what if a little brown bird decides to say something that isn't "peep", something silly like "froodle"? Yes yes yes to this one. The little bit of a rhyming game the birds start to play would be a fun way to get kids practicing their rhyming skills while being silly. Just great. If you don’t tell kids that this book is teaching them to decode nonsense words, they will never catch on and instead will just giggle at the silliness of every sound these birds make. The first time I read it, I just thought I was just goofy. But the more I thought of it, it reminded me of Dibels testing for children, where they have to just read nonsense words. Often it throws them off when they have to do that for the first time. I read this to two different classes of first graders today, just to see how they would respond to it. They thought it was hysterical, and their teachers both loved it and said it would be perfect for center time to work on decoding words with phonics.
What do You think about Froodle (2014)?
Silly picture book about one bird doing her own tweet.
—Dustin
Warning, may cause incoherent giggling. Awwww, yeah.
—vheartravel
