READ TO ME/OPINION

‘My Monster Moofy’

By Annie Watson, illustrated by Eric Zelz (Tilbury House Publishers, Tuesday), age 6-8, 36 pages, $18.95 hardcover.

If I gave stars, this savvy picture book would get many. Besides being a humorously illustrated mystery about what sort of monster Moofy might be, it illustrates 17 literary devices — figures of speech — from simile and metaphor to paradox and pun. It’s effectively a junior high grammar cheat sheet translated for first- graders and really quite deftly done.

We meet a girl who says there is a monster living under her bed. “He changes like a chameleon,” she says. “He can be motionless, like a rock with a tail, or he can strike with blinding speed, like a lightning bolt with claws.”

A narrow flag on the page says: “Similes using ‘like.’”

Turn the page to learn that the monster is named Moofy, that she owns him and that he is something else: “His ears are as pointy as tortilla chips. His tongue is as pink as bubblegum, and his teeth are as sharp as swords.” A narrow flag on this spread says, “Similes using ‘as.’”

(Courtesy W.W. Norton)

So far so simple. But every two-page spread illustrates another figure of speech, and eventually there are upper elementary or even junior high concepts, such as allusion, paradox, antithesis. Antithesis!

Kids will figure out Moofy early on, but the story goes on being interesting. At the end, a glossary defines the flagged language terms, using sentences we’ve just read.

This is one “baby book” precocious kids might like enough to stash in the bedroom bookshelf, where they can find it for ready reference later.

Read to Me is a weekly review of short books.