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Runny Babbit Returns: Another Billy Sook
By Jan Carr,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Scrambled letters make funny poems even sillier.
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What's the Story?
RUNNY BABBIT RETURNS: ANOTHER BILLY SOOK is a collection of short poems about Runny Babbit and his animal friends. Each poem is different, and the animals do all sorts of silly, improbable things. With some of the initial letters of words transposed, Runny meets "a wevil itch with prinkled wurple skin." He "mactices his prusic" and "slays the paxophone." He has a "Bappy Hirthday" with a "cirthday bake," along with "fresents" from "his preinds." And at bedtime? "Ramma Mabbit" reads "stedtime bories."
Is It Any Good?
Shel Silverstein is a master at short, kid-friendly poems with a fun twist at the end, and in these poems, he adds another playful element: switching around the initial letters of some words. These spoonerisms make Runny Babbit Returns: Another Billy Sook even more fun to read. The poems, all centered around "Runny Babbit" and his animal friends, are puzzles to solve, requiring kids to actively listen and flip letters to decode the words and uncover the sense. The opening poem orients kids and explains how it works. Since kids are much closer to the experience of learning language in the first place, it's not so long ago that real words sounded equally new and silly to them, so these scrambles will tickle young funny bones.
But even without the switcheroos, these punch-line poems would be classic. Silverstein was a noted editorial cartoonist, and the black-and-white line drawings of the animals are perfect companions to the jaunty rhymes. Though the book has 42 poems that span 96 pages, don't be scared off from picking this up as a bedtime book. It guarantees giggles.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the wordplay in Runny Babbit Returns: Another Billy Sook. Is it hard for you to figure out some of the words? Which ones are harder? Do the pictures help you make sense of them?
Can you write your own poems about Runny Babbit? Try writing some poems, and after they're finished, switch some of the initial letters.
Do you know any other ways to scramble words and make a secret language or code? Have you ever heard of pig Latin, Obbish, or any other language games?
Book Details
- Author: Shel Silverstein
- Illustrator: Shel Silverstein
- Genre: Poetry
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: Harper
- Publication date: September 19, 2017
- Publisher's recommended age(s): 4 - 8
- Number of pages: 96
- Available on: Hardback
- Last updated: September 15, 2017
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