Word Wizard - Softcover

Cathryn Falwell received a BFA degree in printmaking from the University of Connecticut School of Fine Arts. After launching a graphic design business and then a family, she began to write and illustrate children's books, something she'd wanted to do since second grade. Ms. Falwell lives in Gorham, Maine.

Ages 5^-8. In this original picture book, Anna's eating a bowl of alphabet cereal when she discovers that the letters in her spoon can rearrange themselves to spell two different words. Anna becomes a "word wizard," making the changes happen at will. When she finds a little lost boy, she adds an m and turns his tears into a stream. When the stream flows into the ocean, she rearranges the letters to make a canoe. After a series of adventures, she takes the boy home, where she arms him against further catastrophes by turning the toy sword he carries into words. In an afterword, Falwell explains that Anna is making anagrams, and she encourages readers to play around with the idea by using magnetic letters, alphabet blocks, or pasta, or homemade letters from a variety of suggested materials. Brightly colored and full of action, the cut-paper collage illustrations make this an eye-catching introduction to anagrams. A book with great potential for the classroom. Carolyn Phelan