Oh no! Mr. Wright's class can't believe it. Every single punctuation mark in the classroom has gone on vacation! What will it be like without question marks, apostrophes, periods, and commas? Punctuation has never been as entertaining as it is in this wacky picture book. Grade 1-3-"Day after day, the punctuation marks showed up in Mr. Wright's classroom. Day after day, they did their jobs. They put up with being erased and replaced and corrected and ignored and moved around." Miffed when the teacher quips, "Let's give punctuation a vacation," the various marks decide to take a trip and rush out the door. The class misses them almost immediately, as nothing the students read or write makes any sense without them. The vacationers send postcards back to the class requiring the children to dissect the clever wordplay and figure out which marks sent which cards. The youngsters send their own card apologizing, and all ends happily as the punctuation marks return and order is restored. Pulver's clever story moves along at a nice clip and makes its point without belaboring the matter. Reed's acrylics-on-canvas illustrations are rich in color and texture, and add to the amusement of the story. A lighthearted choice to be read independently or used to introduce a language-arts lesson. Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Gr. 1-3. On the hottest day Mr. Wright's class has ever seen, the teacher gives punctuation a vacation! Insulted, the punctuation marks take off, and a few days later postcards arrive from Take-a-Break Lake. The kids want to write back, but they can't without any punctuation. Borrowing the unruly marks from the class next door, they write a letter begging the marks to return, a letter filled with usage errors that effectively makes their case. Childlike acrylic paintings on canvas "punctuate" the zaniness by turning the marks into characters whose banter exemplifies the marks' use. The messages on the postcards further typify usage (e.g., "Do you miss us? How much? Why couldn't we take a vacation sooner? Guess who?"). A straightforward list of punctuation rules rounds out this inventive and entertaining device for getting kids to understand usage, which proves that nothing makes sense without punctuation. Right? Right! Julie Cummins Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Robin Pulver is a popular picture book author whose website is robinpulver.com. She lives in upstate New York. Lynn Rowe Reed writes and illustrates picture books and lives in Indiana. You can visit her website at lynnrowereed.com Used Book in Good Condition