ELLIS, Belinda ʞɔɒd–to-front-Bob Scholastic (NZ), 2014 unpaged NZ$19.50 pbk ISBN 9781775431831 SCIS 1662028
Here is a wonderful picture book to encourage children to be ‘word nerds’ as detailed in the professional resources section (Overturf et al). In every class there is potentially a top poet of the future, a storyteller who has a love for the magic of word games, who enjoys the pleasure of rhythm and rhyme, whose linguistic intelligence just needs to be fired up and given space. Have you heard of palindromes? Well, young Bob is a word nerd who just loves to play with words, especially reading them backwards and still making sense. But, his real challenge is to try and make a sentence a palindrome where you can read the sentence backward, letter by letter, and the same meaning is being stated. It reads the same both ways. Wow! Are you an ‘avid diva’ and prepared to have chaos in your classroom? However, as Mum reminds Bob in this story, there are many other wonderful words that are not palindromes: what is your most ɘmoƨɘwɒ word? Recommended.
reviewed by John McKenzie