The Very Inappropriate Word
Jim Tobin, illustrated by Dave Coverly
ISBN: 9780805094749
Cartoon-art, thesaurus, concepts presented as concrete objects.
Hooo boy. I will probably never ever ever use this in a storytime, but it's a really fun and funny book, and I'm glad to have run across it.
Michael is our protagonist for this morality tale (because that's exactly what it is) and he loves words. He collects them even (shades of Max's Words and Max's Dragon by Kate Banks) and loves to store them safely away under his bed. Until he is on the bus one morning and hears a new word. He tries it out on his sister, and quickly learns that this is a very inappropriate word. So now what to do? Of course, now that he knows it, he hears it everywhere; at the park, on the radio, even from a parent! (His parents make me exceedingly happy, on a complete tangent.) So he tries it out himself, and shares it with his friends, and of course gets in trouble with the teacher, who (and this is the best part of the book) realizes what has happened, and asks Michael for help collecting new and interesting words for some upcoming spelling tests she needs to create. The time spent (and the new words learned) searching for good enough words just shoves the inappropriate word off out of mind, which is the best way for dealing with those sorts of words anyway.
So very cool, so not appropriate for storytime. :)
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