We’ve reviewed many, many books over the past five years and this has to be one of the most uniquely-named titles. What exactly do semicolons, cupcakes, and cucumbers have in common? Let’s find out!
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Innovation Press sent us a copy of their new children’s book, Semicolons, Cupcakes, and Cucumbers by Steve Newberry to read and share with you. This is a quirky picture book that introduces the uses of commas, exclamation points, periods (full stops to those in the UK), and of course, semicolons, too.
This story is about four friends (semicolon comes along later) who like to hang out together, but often have differences in opinion about what to do. Period expresses himself in statements. Question mark is curious and always has lots of questions. Exclamation mark is more subdued until he really wants to make an impact with his thoughts! And little comma likest to take things in and often has a lot on his mind, that when spoken, necessitates the use of commas.
Are you getting the gist of this yet? To give a bigger impact, the illustrations (also by the author) are all in black and white, while the main characters of the story are in full colour.
The four main characters are still having difficulties coming together cohesively with a plan for the day until semicolon comes out of the woods, introduces herself, and joins all of their ideas together into a single plan.
Now everyone is happy!
At the back of the book are some ‘Learning Time’ pages that explain what each of the punctuation marks are called, what they do, and how they are used correctly. There are even some examples of both correct and incorrect usages for reinforcement.
Tristan and Kallista both enjoyed this book and it’s a fun resource to use when teaching punctuation to children. Punctuation can be fun to teach when you really get into it with funny voices, over-exaggerations, and humour!
Simple Living Creative Learning was inspired and made a printable to go along with this book; click here to see it.
You can purchase Semicolons, Cupcakes, And Cucumbers from Amazon as well as Goodreads, Chapters, and other fine retailers worldwide.
For every 10 Innovation Press, books sold they donate 1 to our non-profit partner First Book!
