By Vanita Oelschlager
Illustrated by Mike Desantis
Published on: May 1, 2014

If you’ve been wondering about what a dangling particle is or need a refresher course then this is the book for you. Plus, unlike college textbooks, this one teaches you how not to dangle those participles in fun and colorful ways.

Description:

Words and pictures show children what a dangling participle is all about. Young readers are shown an incorrect sentence that has in it a dangling participle. They are then taught how to make the sentence read correctly. It is done in a cute and humorous way. The dangling participle loses its way and the children learns how to help it find its way back to the correct spot in the sentence. This is followed by some comical examples of sentences with dangling participles and their funny illustrations, followed by an illustration of the corrected sentence. Young readers will have fun recognizing this problem in sentence construction and learning how to fix it. 

Thoughts:

Don’t Dangle Your Participle opens with a brief two-page description of what a participle is and how it can dangle. What follows are sets of pages that at first show an incorrect sentence with pictures that humorously depict what is accidentally being said. Then, it shows what the correct sentence is with a corrected picture.

What I appreciated in this book were the pictures. While, theoretically someone might understand the error of a dangling particle without pictures, there are most definitely will be those who will benefit from a pictorial reference to fully grasp what it means when you put words in a certain order and manner.

Overall, Don’t Dangle Your Participle would be a great addition for a school classroom or library. It’s got humorous way about it that can engage a reader and help teach some of the lessons of grammar that sometime elude us. However, it probably won’t be a book you buy as a bedtime story, but one more for educational purposes for older kids who have a basic understanding of grammar or participles.

Thanks to Netgalley for the reader copy and opportunity to provide an honest review.