Curses and Blessings for All
Occasions. By Bradley Trevor Greive. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.
Super Grammar. By Tony
Preciado. Illustrated by Rhode Montijo. Scholastic. $8.99.
Everyone who buys gift
books knows what Bradley Trevor Greive does.
John Cleese puts it succinctly on the back of Curses and Blessings for All Occasions: Greive “has amassed vast
piles of cash putting saccharine comments under photos of cute-looking animals.” Well, yes, there is that. But Greive’s comments are genuinely funny,
and in his latest book he proves that he can make them not only under photos of
cute-looking animals but also next to those photos and above them. Oh, and the animals need not be cute – and
the photos can be digitally manipulated!
Greive is clearly moving into new territory here. But he remains firmly in his comfort zone,
and that of readers, in one way: through cleverness. There are 33 blessings and 33 curses in Curses and Blessings for All Occasions,
on facing pages, and they really are, well, different. “May your French kissing be awarded three
Michelin stars” is the blessing on one page (above a picture of creatures with
exceptionally long red tongues, suitably entwined); the curse on the opposite
page reads, “May your tubes of toothpaste and hemorrhoid cream appear identical
in poor light,” with the unfortunately cursed sea creature thinking “My tongue
is numb” while a much smaller animal, strategically placed in the rear, is
thinking, “Spearmint?” Nor is everything
here scatological. One curse reads, “May
your life begin and end with diaper rash” (downcast animal with rear end
artificially reddened), while the blessing on the facing page says, “May you be
reunited with your lost socks in the afterlife” (animal skeleton in socks). Then there are the two snails offered with
the blessing, “May your carpet burns attract the quiet admiration of your
peers,” facing a winged hippo with a devilish expression for the curse, “May a bomber
formation of incontinent geese fly over your sunroof.” Greive will surely amass additional vast
piles of cash with Curses and Blessings
for All Occasions, but the book does leave one intriguing question
unanswered: for whom, exactly, would you buy it?
There is no question
about who will benefit from Super
Grammar: anyone who is grammatically challenged and enjoys graphic novels,
comics and superheroes. Nominally
written for young readers, Tony Preciado’s book also works as a quick refresher
course for high-school and college students and even for adults. Like ABC’s famous Schoolhouse Rock animations, Super
Grammar works by combining two formats: instruction and entertainment. Thanks to Preciado’s clear, straightforward
explanations of grammar and Rhode Montijo’s excellent illustrations – he really
does have superhero anatomy down pat – the book is fun as well as
informative. For example, The Predicate
(woman wearing thigh-high boots and a cape as part of her super costume) works
with The Subject (caped crusader in red, with long blue cape) to form complete
sentences, such as “The cat burglar is stealing cats” (bad guy in dark purple
putting bewildered-looking cartoon cats in a sack). The Verb (she is mostly in red, trailing a
lightning bolt to represent activity) can “express a state of action,” as in
the sentence, “The mutant insects destroy entire cities” (featuring three-eyed
flying things that project evil green rays).
Arrayed against the superheroic types is “The Sabotage Squad” of grammar
villains: “So, citizen, never make the mistake of underestimating he trickery
of the sabotage squad, because when it comes to breaking the rules of grammar –
there’s nobody worse.” Here you will find, for example, The Comma Splice,
another thigh-high-boots woman, dressed in gray with black boots and gloves and
creating improperly joined sentences such as “They need help, I must fly to the
rescue” (a sentence requiring a semicolon rather than a comma). Actually, this particular supervillain is
especially insidious, since many readers will think it is correct to write, “I
can’t believe it, he’s breaking loose” instead of putting a period after “it”
and creating two sentences. The “super
examples” in the book are both helpful and amusing – and the illustrations are
clever, showing the supervillain triumphant when something is wrong and looking
frustrated when it is corrected. Super Grammar itself is not quite
perfect –supervillains seem to sneak in and win sometimes. For example, “The Prickly Pair are causing
trouble” features two cactus-spiky bad guys popping a child’s balloon, but the
verb number is wrong: in American English, it should be “is causing trouble,”
with “pair” (singular) as the antecedent (British English has different rules
for collective nouns). These missteps
are small and infrequent, though. As a
whole, Super Grammar really is a
super guide to good writing and appropriate word use, and its offbeat
characters – such as a four-armed bad guy who cracks safes with ease and a
purse snatcher, dressed as a skunk, who releases foul odors – make learning
parts of speech a super experience.
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