6/5/2022 Picture Book Round-Up: Ruth Heller’s World of Language series

One of my biggest hurdles when learning how to read was differentiating the parts of speech. I had no clue what a noun was, let alone a “proper” noun. Verbs & adverbs were easily confused. I could memorize the jingle “Conjunction-junction, what’s your function?” but I couldn’t provide any semblance of an answer to it. My teachers tried to assist. They put up anchor charts & lovely laminated Scholastic posters & asked probing questions about subjects & predicates, but nothing really stuck.

I felt a little sour about not being able to understand the differences, since I tried so hard to quiz myself with flashcards & take notes from textbooks, but alas. I finally threw in the towel & coasted by for years in this silent shame. I guess I hoped that I wouldn’t need to know what a preposition was to write poetry & work in greenhouses.

Flash-forward to my first Friends of the Library booksale in Gainesville. I was eighteen & wandering, starry-eyed, through the cramped aisles of children’s literature. I did some freelance tutoring at the time, so I was filling a Publix bag with any picture or chapter book that looked promising, so I could use them with my students later on. Suddenly, I stumbled across a book in the rummage bin that caught my eye. It had these giant, swirly lollipops on the cover:

I have a soft spot for lollipops. Any kid that grew up as close to SeaWorld, Disney & the theme parks as I did could tell you exactly what they look like, taste like, & weigh. Dum-Dums, Blow-Pops, those sad little butterscotch lollies the teller would give you when your parents took you with them to the bank, etc. I was a lollipop enthusiast. Kid you not, I once asked my teacher if I could do my Science Fair project on how many licks it really did take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. She rejected the idea. Alas, the world will never know.

I flipped through the book & was absolutely floored to discover that it was an illustrated, kid-friendly instructional manual on adjectives. “An adjective’s terrific / even when it’s not specific…” It rhymed. It had gorgeous illustrations. It had bite-size chunks of information that I could finally wrap my head around. That day, in the middle of a crowded warehouse with no A/C, surrounded by bibliophiles & opportunists alike, it finally clicked for me.

So I spent the next few booksales scouring the same section for Ruth Heller’s other books. My goal was to gather the entire series so I could close the door on the burning questions & inadequacy I’d always felt. Years of thrifting & eBay purchases later, the collection is complete.

Now that I’ve read them all & have them safely tucked away for my own children to muddle through, I present them to you for safekeeping. If your kiddo struggles with Language Arts & nothing else seems to be working, give the World of Language series a gander.

Picture Books 1-8

Title(s): Here are all eight books in the series:

• Merry-Go-Round: A Book About Nouns

• A Cache of Jewels and Other Collective Nouns

• Mine, All Mine: A Book About Pronouns

• Kites Sail High: A Book About Verbs

• Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives

• Up, Up, and Away: A Book About Adverbs

• Behind the Mask: A Book About Prepositions

• Fantastic! Wow! And Unreal!: A Book About Interjections and Conjunctions

Author & Illustrator: Ruth Heller

Recommended for: Grades 4-6, but they are also good refreshers for adults, especially ELA teachers

Basic plot(s): Not applicable. Each book patiently & clearly lays out vocabulary for the reader, while illustrating it appealingly around a central theme, like hot air balloons or candy.

Why I love them: This hits high on the entertaining/ useful matrix, which is the Holy Grail when it comes to devouring books.

Fun fact: Ruth Heller began her career by designing cocktail napkins for Cost Plus (a.k.a. World Market). Eventually, her geometric designs, coupled with her Gilbert & Sullivan-reminiscent rhymes, made her a favorite in the ESL world, & librarians began to flock to her to commission grammatical manuals. Heller’s even illustrated a Merriam-Webster dictionary. Anyone who can make a dictionary readable is a goddess, in my humble opinion.

Where can you find them? Amazon, eBay, AbeBooks, Thriftbooks, OverDrive, The Friends of the Library Booksale in Alachua County. Prices vary.

Extension activity: Do pre- & post- tests of parts of speech before & after reading these books, just so you can ascertain the knowledge gleaned. A K-W-L chart would suffice.

Additionally, a sensory scavenger hunt either around your house, the store, or a park, where you engage your kiddo in a sort of I-Spy game of identifying parts of speech, would be stimulating. If mobility is limited or you live in an unsafe area, give your kiddo a photograph & have them identify the different elements within that picture. They can even make collages of each term in action:

Finally, consider having them write their OWN part of speech book for a missing term in the series (article). Bonus points if they can make it rhyme.

I also like the idea of encouraging them to INVENT a new part of speech! Have them present it to you like a Science Fair project or motivational speech & see what hilarity & creativity they generate.

Thanks for tuning in! Keep the pages turning until we meet again. (Oh, & whatever you do – DON’T shorten the term “Parts of Speech” into a three-letter acronym).

Love,

Sash