Book #22 - Eek! Creak! Snicker, Sneak!

"When all the town is fast asleep, two little creatures crawl and creep."

Title: Eat, Sneak, Snicker, Sneak!
Author: Rhoda Gowler Greene
Illustrator: Jos A. Smith
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Date of Publication: 2002

Genre: Fiction
Readbility Lexile: Not Found

Summary:

This is the story of two monsters, Bugbear and Bugaboo, that travel to the house of a little girl and boy to scare them at night. They make all kinds of scary noises and play sneaky tricks on them. They little boy and girl get scared and tell they mother and father. Their parents come up with all kinds of excuses for what the noises might be. They finally figure out what is playing on the tricks and making all the scary noises. They decided to get pay back! They sneak outside and scare Bugbear and Bugaboo. They run away and never come back.

Evaluation:

This is a twist on the “monster in your closet” type of story. This is a good story because it is imaginative, a little creepy, and pretty silly. They author uses so many onomatopoeia words  to describe all the scary sounds the two little monsters are making. These monsters are just trying to go about their scaring business when the two children in this story do some scaring of their own. The little boy and girl in the story overcome their fears of nighttime and darkness and realize that they the sounds like hear at night are not really that scary. The setting of this story is the house and the yard surrounding the house. The monsters creep around until the boy and girl work up their courage to scare them away. The language and actions fit well with the characters and help to add meaning to the story. The sequencing of this story is also helped by the connection between the illustrations and text.

Literary Elements:

1. Rhyme: This story is like one long, rhyming poem. Some of the words they rhyme are asleep and creep; top, plop, stop; small and all; jump and bump; breeze and sneeze; and so many more. The rhymes in this book make it really fun to read aloud. 

2. Onomatopoeia: There are so many onomatopoeia words in the book. The little monsters like to make creepy noises to scare the children. It really adds to their characters because they it wouldn't be the same if the author just wrote, "then the monsters made some scary noises". The actually noises written out in word for helps the reader to understand that these monsters are trying to be scary. 

3. Theme: The theme of this story is that it is okay to be afraid and that everyone gets scared from time to time. This book also teaches us that sometimes it is important to face your fears. The children in this book to this by confronting and scaring away the monsters at the end of the book. 

Illustrations:

This book needs illustrations because we don't necessarily know what a bugbear or a bugaboo look like. The pictures help readers to visualize that the monsters look like and what their actions are. The pictures also help to portray the emotions that the children and the monsters in this story are feeling at different times throughout the plot. 

Mini-Lesson Idea:
I would use this book to teach onomatopoeia because it has the most and most unique sounds words of the books I've read. After reading this book and having different students take turns saying the sounds that the monsters make in this book we would develop our own monsters and the students would have to figure out what kind of sounds their monster would make and how they would spell those sound words. They would have to take into account their monsters personality and demeanor.