The Great Show-and-Tell Disaster. (Judy Freeman's Booktalk: Back-to-School Books).THE GREAT SHOW-AND-TELL Show-And-Tell - A visual dataflow language designed for use by elementary school children. ["A Visual Language for Keyboardless Programming", T. Kimura et al, TR WUCS-86-6, CS Dept Washington U, Mar 1986]. ["Show and Tell: A Visual Language", T.D. Kimura et al in Visual Programming Environments: Paradigms and Systems, E.P. Glinert ed, IEEE Comp Sci Press, 1990, pp. 397-404]. DISASTER By Mike Reiss; illustrated by Mike Cressy. Price Stem Sloan, 2001; 32 pages; $13.99 (Gr. 1-4). When Ned uses bits and pieces of garbage and duct tape to create a Mix-up Ray for show-and-tell, he gains the power to transform ordinary objects into, well, other ordinary objects. He points it at a SHOE, and the shoe becomes a HOSE, his LAMP turns into a PALM, and LEMONS become MELONS. At school and on his class trip to the Museum of Art, Ned unleashes his device's full letter-scrambling powers, even turning teacher MRS. ETON Eton College, largest and most famous of the English public schools, founded with King's College, Cambridge Univ., by King Henry VI in 1440. Some of the buildings (chapel, lower school, cloisters) date back to the 15th cent. Eton is unlike other English public schools in that it does not have a prefect system. At Eton senior students have a larger voice in the selection of student leaders. into a three-headed MONSTER. Vigilant readers will pore over the large, colorful illustrations to identify all the objects Ned zaps, anagram anagram [Gr.,=something read backward], rearrangement of the letters of a word or words to make another word or other words. A famous Latin anagram was an answer made out of a question asked by Pilate. The question was Quid est veritas? [What is truth?], and the answer Est vir qui adest [it is the man who is here]. An anagram that reads the same backward as forward is a palindrome, e.g., "Able was I ere I saw Elba." style, and figure out how rearranged letters can spell whole new words. ACTIVITY: Draw and duplicate a grid template of one-inch squares and have students print their names, one letter per square. Once the letters are cut into individual squares, the kids can see what words they can create out of their own full names. Since every name doesn't turn neatly into an anagram, ask them to look for meaningful words and phrases hidden within without worrying about using all of the letters (JUDITH ANN FREEMAN becomes FINE DEAR AUNT). For older readers, show Jon Agee's clever Elvis Lives and Other Anagrams (Farrar, 2000). JUDY FREEMAN, a children's literature consultant and workshop presenter (www.JudyReadsBooks.com), is the author of More Books Kids Will Sit Still For (Bowker/Greenwood, 1995). |
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