The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage without Apostrophes!
Bringing her proper-punctuation campaign to children for the second time, Truss follows up her best-selling 2006 picture book, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Matter! (which shares its title with Truss' bestseller for adults) with this companion about apostrophes. Mishaps related to the flying comma (fancifully envisioned as a Good Punctuation Fairy . . . flitting above a page of words) are set forth in paired statements, with Timmons' lighthearted cartoons driving home the shift in meaning precipitated by missing or misplaced apostrophes. The strain of coming up with clever, illustration-friendly examples occasionally shows, but many of the 13 scenarios successfully find the sweet spot between kid-pleasing goofiness and perfect clarity of purpose: with one scenario's play on the two meanings of behind, one referring to a horse's rear end, kids won't soon forget the crucial distinction between its and it's. Endnotes provide brief technical explanations. Hide your red pens: if Truss and Timmons keep this up, the grammar police may have its youngest recruits yet. Mattson, Jennifer