FICTION

E-mergency!

978-0-81187-898-2.
COPY ISBN
RedReviewStarK-Gr 2—All the letters of the alphabet live together in one big, happy house. One morning as they race down the stairs to breakfast, E goes too fast and falls, injuring one of her appendages. After the EMTs arrive, bringing TLC and carrying an IV, E is admitted to the hospital. To properly recover she can't be used, so O is picked to fill in on her behalf. Despite news reports, congressional hearings, reader boards, a spot on Oprah, and a world tour to spread the news to use O instead of E, the injured letter is still not getting better. In a surprise worthy of Jon Stone's The Monster at the End of This Book (Western Publishing, 1971), the letters suddenly turn on the narrator and demand that he stop using E as he is why she's not getting better. After a page of tricky-to-read prose, E is healed and ready to go back to work just in time for thE End. The text tells only part of the story. The detailed cartoons of the letters in action with a plethora of speech balloons take the story to a whole other level of humor. This artwork takes a funny story and makes it hilarious to the right readers/listeners, of which there will be many. Kids and adults will get more of the sly humor each time they read this book. Warning: It's not easy to read all those words with the E replaced by an O.—Catherine Callegari, Gay-Kimball Library, Troy, NH
When E tumbles down the stairs, O is elected to fill in while his fellow vowel recuperates. What follows is mass confusion ("That's it, PORIOD"; "I'm OXCITOD!!") The joke is one note, but plenty of visual humor in the lively cartoon illustrations carry the story along until E goes home at "thE End."

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