Elbert's Bad Word

Title: Elbert's Bad Word
Author: Audrey Wood
Illustrator: Don Wood
Publisher and date of publication: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers 1988
Genre: Fantasy Fiction
Age: 1-3

Elbert is a young boy, one day at a garden party at his house he found a bad word and stuffed it into his pocket. While watching his Aunt Isabella sing the bad word flew into his mouth. Next thing you know the butler had dropped a tray of deviled eggs which caused a chain of events where at the end a croquet mallet fell onto Elbert's big toe. When the mallet landed the bad word flew out of Elbert's mouth. His mother then made him wash his mouth out with soap. Elbert then went to see the gardener who was also a wizard. Elbert knew that he would know what to do about the bad word. The wizard baked Elbert a pie that would cure his use of the bad word. Inside the pie were all kinds of words to use instead of the bad word. Elbert ate the pie and returned to the party. A chain of unfortunate events led to the mallet landing on Elbert’s big toe again. Only this time Elbert used funny words to describe the pain and the bad word went away forever.

Elbert's Bad Word is funny, entertaining and one that we can all relate to. I consider myself to be pretty good at watching my tongue especially around children. However I do fear the day that a bad word slips out of my mouth in front of my students. I think as a teacher I can really respect this book because even as an adult I to need a reminder of other words to use and to remember to practice using good words in place of the bad words. Elbert’s bad word was originally done in pencil then done with color. The pictures were lively, detailed and full of color. However the most important thing was that the book never used a specific bad word it was always referred to just as the "bad word". I appreciate this because as a teacher I want to teach my students to not use ALL bad words not just the one that could have been used in the book. Don Wood did a great job at portraying the bad word. It looked like a dust ball floating around in the air and it had a grumpy face. I think that children can see that it was grey, dull, and not something they want to be a part of.

In the classroom I would use this book to explore bad and good words. I would be careful to not introduce them to words they don't know but instead invite them to tell me the bad words that they are not allowed to use. Then as a class we would come up with a list of good words to use instead of bad words. We could come up with some really fun and funny words that I think kids would enjoy using instead of a bad word. Also I could address different situations in which they might use bad words then discuss and practice using the words that we had come up with as a class. I think it would be fun and something that my students would really learn from. So, I would definitely use this book in my classroom and I recommend it to everyone else as well.