Babble!: And How Punctuation Saved It

A village is torn apart by its residents' inability to communicate, until a little girl shares the gift of punctuation in this humorous illustrated parable.\nChaos reigns in the village of Babble! All day, the residents fight, yell and argue, and no one is heard or understood . . . until a mysterious little girl arrives and gives the locals something very strange: a period. But what is this thing that looks like a freckle or a spot? The villagers don't even know how to ask. However, as the girl begins to share more gifts — a question mark, quotation marks — the residents slowly learn how to communicate. But when more fights arise and disaster strikes, can punctuation truly save the day?\nFrom School Library Journal\nK-Gr 4—The village of Babble makes no sense. Sentences and thoughts run together and there is no logic in speech. Then a small child with a mysterious bag of interesting symbols brings order to life and thought. In this humorous parable, periods, commas, question marks, and especially exclamation points help organize life and even save the life of a drowning child. Told in a fairy-tale format, this story humorously clarifies readers' age-old questions on the need for punctuation rules. The frightening message of "Soon we will eat Grandpa" can, with the simple addition of a comma, become the much more appetizing, "Soon we will eat, Grandpa." The illustrations in muted brown are hazy and of not much interest. But the story itself will make children laugh and learn in equal measure. VERDICT Recommended for classroom use as well as for independent reading; this useful parable teaches a memorable lesson on the necessity of good punctuation skills.—Eva Elisabeth VonAncken