Baloney Henry P.

To say that Baloney is extraordinarily different would be a gross understatement. To begin with, Baloney wasn't written: it was received and decoded by John Scieszka and cisual recreation was undertaken by Lane Smith.

Henry P Baloney, the Alien, is late for school and when asked by his teacher, Miss Bugscuffle, for an explanation, he proceeds to give an account which includes losing his "Zimulis", an encounter with a "Razzo" and saving himself from a "Zerplatzen", all over the "Speelplaat". However, Miss Bugscuffle is not convinced, and sets Henry to write a tall story! The text, mainly in capital letters, needs a decoder in places, found on the last page. Decode the signals and discover words from different earth languages, including Latvian, Swahili, Finnish, Esperanto and Inuktitut, among others. This excellent book will certainly fire the imaginations of children aged seven and older, and probably older people experiencing their second childhood too! --Susan Naylor

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A Goulash of Languages in a Far-Fetched Tall Tale - Rated
The best children's books entrance you with their images, the story and the images build on one another, and the story adds dimensions that are unanticipated and interesting. This book almost meets those tests, and adds to your language skills in the process.

"Last Tuesday morning, at 8:37 a.m., Henry P. Baloney was late once too often." "That's it," said Miss Bugscuffle. "Permanent Lifelong Detention . . . unless you have one very good and very believable excuse."

Then begins the wildest tale tale you've ever heard. It all starts when a zimulis is misplaced. It is on a deski in a torakku on the way to szkola, and suddenly the torakku goes past! Henry grabbed his zimulis and jumped out, right onto a razzo launch pad. He opened the pordo and landed on the next razzo while it was blasting off.

Then things got really strange!

If you could see the illustrations, you would be able to make more of this story. You would probably guess that a zimulis is a pencil and that a torakku is a truck. Decoding these strange words will definitely keep your mind occupied. Just when you think you have them figured out, they switch again. It turns out that the strange words are in Finnish, Latin, Ugbaric, Maltese, Swahili, French, Melanesian Pidgen, Esperanto, Italian, Spoonerisms, Dutch, Japanese, Welsh, German, Inuktitut, Latvian, and transpositions. There is an afterword that tips you off, and a decoder to help you decipher the words. But you will have much more fun trying it on your own, learning from the context of the surrounding words and the illustrations.

So obviously, the text and the illustrations build on one another. Because you aren't always sure what the words mean, the story is unexpected.

Unfortunately, the tall tale itself follows a path similar enough to all tall tales that it fails to intrigue of its own merit (without the clever word plays). I graded the book down one star for this weakness.

I am also unsure how much fun it will be read this book over and over again. After all, at some point your child and you will know what each word means and how Henry's predicament ends up. Without the suspense that you will genuinely feel on the first time, this book will probably become much less special.

If you are interested in intriguing your child with the potential of words to fascinate and draw attention, this is a definite book to have. The illustrations are outstanding, and nicely amplify the very unusual text.

After you and your child have read the book, you can have some fun discussions about how to use context to determine which meanings of English words are intended. As you know, many words (like "green") can have many different meanings. Are you supposed to see the color or a person who is inexperienced?

Explore the full potential of any story, using all the tools at your disposal!