Recently a friend's young daughter bought me a book entitled, Miss Mary is Scary. She found it and thought of me. I hope this is because of my name and not the scary part. The back of the book says it's for readers age seven to ten. On page five an asterisk moved my eyes to the bottom of the page. At the bottom was the following message, "What are you looking down here for? The story's up there, dumbhead!" Dumbhead. First let me say I think dumb head is two words. Second, I am not a dumb head. When I read on to page 14, I was dismayed at the use of, "Oh snap." Seriously, oh snap. My favorite chapter was perhaps "I Love Dirt." In the chapter is an "I love Dirt" rap.
"Now some love Ernie,
and some love Bert,
and some love Big Bird;
but I love dirt."
I would like to point out that the punctuation is incorrect. One wouldn't use a semi-colon with a coordinating conjunction (but). My students (most) could help the author with that punctuation problem.
Tomorrow I will return the book to the young lady who gave it to me, so she can read it. My hope is that she starts saying, "Oh snap!"
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