Nouns Say “What’s That?”

Personified as colorful monsters in this grammatical learning journey, nouns Person, Place, and Thing head via bus to a museum (“a place noun”) to find their ilk—words that “give names to the world around us.” Throughout the trip, they point out proper, plural, irregular, and collective nouns, and the rules associated with them (“proper nouns... always begin with a capital letter”; “nouns that become plural in an unusual way are called irregular nouns”). And nouns are labeled within Lowen’s muted, cartoon-like illustrations (“statue,” “dog”), further clarifying the part of speech in each spread. While the narrative amounts to little more than a listing of words, the spreads build upon each other, connected by recurring characters and related concepts, to create a remarkably digestible educational tool. A brief yet comprehensive guide to nouns of all kinds. Ages 5–8. [em](Aug.) [/em]