Product Description

Sage has misheard and misunderstood one of Mrs. Page's weekly vocabulary words. Her error leads to a humbling catastrophe: a momentous tragedy, in front of the entire class. Can Sage turn her vocabulary disaster: an event bringing great misfortune, into a triumph: a true success?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #102212 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-15
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .13" h x 9.76" w x 10.94" l, .47 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 40 pages

From Amazon.com
Sniffling and coughing through a week at home with a cold, Sage (one who shows wisdom, experience, judgment") misunderstands one of Mrs. Page's vocabulary words in the homework assignment, and the resulting embarrassment in front of her fifth-grade class leaves her "devastated: wasted, ravaged. Ruined: destroyed. Finished: brought to an end." Miss Alaineus is not, as Sage determined in her "defective and delirious" mind, "the woman on green spaghetti boxes whose hair is the color of uncooked pasta and turns into spaghetti at the ends." Sage slumps home after the vocabulary bee fiasco, to her mom's comforting, if seemingly impossible words: "There's gold in every mistake." Fortunately, and as always, mothers know best.

Debra Frasier (author-illustrator of On the Day You Were Born) has created a masterpiece of clever wordplay in her hilarious and poignant story of the exquisite pain of schoolgirl mortification. One sentence using vocabulary words from A to Z runs along the bottom or side of each page ("Obliterate me, send me to oblivion--no one could outdo my stupidity"). Not just for word-worms, virtually any kid will identify with the occasionally confusing world of learning, and be reassured by the happy conclusion. Frasier's youthful artwork was inspired by her daughter's fifth-grade desk. "No fancy art supplies; just markers, notebook paper, pencils, glue, and scissors." The result is eminently inviting for grade-school children. (Ages 8 to 12) --Emilie Coulter

From School Library Journal
Grade 3-5-This inventive picture book is a spelling book, a vocabulary book, a game book, and a costume book all rolled into one. Sage, a fifth grader who is home sick, phones a classmate to get her homework assignment. In a big hurry, Starr spells each word out except for the last one. Mistakenly, Sage writes what she hears, Miss Alaineus. When she returns to school, Mrs. Page holds a Vocabulary Bee and gives her the word miscellaneous. Her creative spelling and definition sends the class into gales of laughter, much to Sage's dismay. Resolution occurs 10 days later when she arrives at the Annual Vocabulary Parade dressed as "Miss Alaineus, Queen of all Miscellaneous Things." The student's ability to take her mistake and remake it into a positive experience is a valuable lesson. The text and marker illustrations are detailed and appealing, crammed full of fun ways to promote the study of the English language. There is a hidden-word game on the endpapers, an extra credit assignment using alphabetical sentences on every page, and pictures of Sage's Vocabulary Parade Scrapbook on the last three pages.
Karen Land, Greenport Public Schools, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 3-5. Frasier, author of On the Day You Were Born (1991), offers a story in picture-book format for older readers. When fifth-grader Sage mistakenly hears the word mis cellaneous as Miss Alaineus and comes up with her own erroneous definition, she is mortified to hear the teacher and the entire class laugh. She manages to turn their amusement to her benefit, though, when she appears in the schoolwide vocabulary contest as Miss Alaineus and wins a gold trophy for "The Most Original Use of a Word in the Tenth Annual Vocabulary Parade." Frasier deserves her own trophy for most original use of school supplies, since, according to the dust jacket, she made the illustrations from "what she found in her daughter's fifth-grade desk--no fancy art supplies; just markers, notebook paper, pencils, glue, and scissors." Using bright, solid-colored papers as well, she creates a series of large-scale, brightly colored collages that resemble a grade-school student's artwork, but with a more advanced sense of design. Although some children will be put off by the picture-book format, fans of Marissa Moss' Amanda's Notebook series may be open to this highly visual, first-person story. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved