The Book With No Pictures

The Book With No Pictures

Specifics

APA Citation: Novak, B. J. (2014). The book with no pictures. NY, NY: Dial Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

Meets EDU 333 Blog Requirement For: Written within the last six years (2014).

Lexile Level: 380L

Audience: This is a children's book that is recommended for ages 5-8 years old. This would be a great story for a read allowed in a classroom. 

Summary

This book is a great read simply for entertainment. As the reader reads the book out loud, the author gives them rules on how exactly to read the book, "Here is how books work: Everything the words say, the person reading the book has to say. No matter what. That's the deal. That's the rule." The book is humorous throughout, and is bound to make any child laugh at the ridiculous things the reader has to say. 

Evaluation

This book is especially cool to read out loud to a class because it uses metafiction, or breaks the fourth wall, by speaking to the audience, "Is this whole book a trick? Can I stop reading, please? No?!!" This would be a great time to introduce this lesson to students. Breaking the fourth wall is not done often, but can be very useful when done right. 

Novak also uses onomatopoeia throughout the book such as, "AiiEE! AiiEE! AiiEE!!!" or "Beep. Boop." Instead of just making the reader say silly things like "I am a monkey." Forcing them to read these sounds out loud adds a whole new level of silly to the story. Along with other literary devices, he uses consonance while forcing the reader to sing a song, "glug glug glug my face is a bug...I eat ants for breakfast right off the ruuuuuuug!" Novak uses many literary devices throughout this book, all of which help to support the humor throughout the story. 

Considering the title of the book is called, "The Book With No Pictures" it is no surprise that it does not include illustrations. It does, however, give the reader visuals with BIG words in different colors. 

Mini Lesson

For a mini lesson, I would have the students go page by page and pick out any literary devices they could find on each page. This would be done in an older classroom. In a younger classroom, I'd love to have them use this book as an inspiration for a story of their own. I might do something where each child in the room creates their own page, and then we put it together to make one big silly book. Or they could each create their own silly book and stretch the lesson out over the course of a week or so.