Wacky Wednesday

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View books by Dr. Seuss.

What's Wrong with This Picture? - Rated
This book deserves more than five stars and is one of the best beginning readers ever created!

Wacky Wednesday combines the interesting repetition of a beginning reader with a fun set of picture puzzles. The two features are wonderful together for encouraging careful observation (useful in life, as well as in word recognition).

As a result of this brilliant book concept, Theodore Geisel (a k a Theo. Le Sieg -- Geisel backwards, and Dr. Seuss) have teamed up with New Yorker cartoonist, George Booth, to create a fun classic that will be enjoyed by parents and children for many generations to come.

Imagine a day that begins when you look up in bed over your head, and see something funny:

"It all began with that shoe on the wall.

A shoe on the wall . . . ?

Shouldn't be there at all!"

A child wakes up one morning to finds increasing numbers of unusual objects in rather odd places. Pretty soon, the objects even begin start to split apart. And that's how Wacky Wednesday began.

The child looks out the window and sees a bunch of bananas growing in a normal tree and water running through a garden hose with a long section missing in it. Out in the hall, a candy cane holds up a part of a hall table, one door has two knobs, and a picture is upside down. In the bathroom, the child wears one sock while showering, there's a palm tree in the toilet, one faucet is upside down, and a fish is swimming happily in the shampoo bottle.

In the bedroom while dressing, four things are wrong (including more misplaced shoes). In the kitchen, this grows to five. On the way to school, there are six. Later, down the street, there are seven. Outside the school are eight. In the classroom, there are nine.

That's when cognitive dissonance sets in. The teacher orders the student out, wanting to avoid the wackiness.

Outside the school now, there are ten new wacky things. Down the street, eleven more . . . then another twelve.

Just when desperation sets in, a policeman tells the child that only 20 more things have to be found . . . and then the child can go to bed . . . because Wacky Wednesday is over.

The pictures present lots of opportunities to help your child notice how things work. Water needs to go through something to come out the other end. You need a door at the end of steps to get into a house. Windows cannot stand by themselves in the middle of a lawn. People don't drive sitting in the back seat of a car. The beauty of this kind of picture juxtaposition is in the opportunity to have many conversations with your child to open up the beauty of how things fit together, and don't work so well when they don't fit.

As for the beginning reader aspect, the book has many one syllable words that rhyme. This provides the maximum ease for decoding the letters and turning them into words. I put in the examples of the rhymes here to make that point for you.

I thought that the ways the details in the pictures were jumbled were quite imaginative. The wacky elements are well distributed on a page, and seldom repeat the jokes. This makes it continually interesting to search for them.

Ultimately, the book is rewarding too for the idea the teacher expresses -- that the child is having a wacky day rather than that anything is really wrong. We all have days like that. Then, suddenly they are over. That is good psychological reassurance for your child. You should encourage that thought, as well.

After you finish enjoying the book, I suggest that you each try your hand at creating a two page layout with pictures and a simple rhyme. That will make you both appreciate the book more, and give you a fun experience together.

Enjoy finding what needs to be unwhacked!

What's Wrong with This Picture? - Rated
This book deserves more than five stars and is one of the best beginning readers ever created!

Wacky Wednesday combines the interesting repetition of a beginning reader with a fun set of picture puzzles. The two features are wonderful together for encouraging careful observation (useful in life, as well as in word recognition).

As a result of this brilliant book concept, Theodore Geisel (a k a Theo. Le Sieg -- Geisel backwards, and Dr. Seuss) have teamed up with New Yorker cartoonist, George Booth, to create a fun classic that will be enjoyed by parents and children for many generations to come.

Imagine a day that begins when you look up in bed over your head, and see something funny:

"It all began with that shoe on the wall.

A shoe on the wall . . . ?

Shouldn't be there at all!"

A child wakes up one morning to finds increasing numbers of unusual objects in rather odd places. Pretty soon, the objects even begin start to split apart. And that's how Wacky Wednesday began.

The child looks out the window and sees a bunch of bananas growing in a normal tree and water running through a garden hose with a long section missing in it. Out in the hall, a candy cane holds up a part of a hall table, one door has two knobs, and a picture is upside down. In the bathroom, the child wears one sock while showering, there's a palm tree in the toilet, one faucet is upside down, and a fish is swimming happily in the shampoo bottle.

In the bedroom while dressing, four things are wrong (including more misplaced shoes). In the kitchen, this grows to five. On the way to school, there are six. Later, down the street, there are seven. Outside the school are eight. In the classroom, there are nine.

That's when cognitive dissonance sets in. The teacher orders the student out, wanting to avoid the wackiness.

Outside the school now, there are ten new wacky things. Down the street, eleven more . . . then another twelve.

Just when desperation sets in, a policeman tells the child that only 20 more things have to be found . . . and then the child can go to bed . . . because Wacky Wednesday is over.

The pictures present lots of opportunities to help your child notice how things work. Water needs to go through something to come out the other end. You need a door at the end of steps to get into a house. Windows cannot stand by themselves in the middle of a lawn. People don't drive sitting in the back seat of a car. The beauty of this kind of picture juxtaposition is in the opportunity to have many conversations with your child to open up the beauty of how things fit together, and don't work so well when they don't fit.

As for the beginning reader aspect, the book has many one syllable words that rhyme. This provides the maximum ease for decoding the letters and turning them into words. I put in the examples of the rhymes here to make that point for you.

I thought that the ways the details in the pictures were jumbled were quite imaginative. The wacky elements are well distributed on a page, and seldom repeat the jokes. This makes it continually interesting to search for them.

Ultimately, the book is rewarding too for the idea the teacher expresses -- that the child is having a wacky day rather than that anything is really wrong. We all have days like that. Then, suddenly they are over. That is good psychological reassurance for your child. You should encourage that thought, as well.

After you finish enjoying the book, I suggest that you each try your hand at creating a two page layout with pictures and a simple rhyme. That will make you both appreciate the book more, and give you a fun experience together.

Enjoy finding what needs to be unwhacked!

wacky wednesday - Rated
Although i find this book very annoying, my children aged 2 and 3 think its brilliant, i only wish they could read it themselves!