A Bookish Girl
So...it's a sweet story, and goodness knows we need more stories about accepting people and embracing their differences. And I quite enjoyed Walliams' writing style (lots of directly addressing the reader and sharing in-jokes with them). But what drove me absolutely bonkers was the incorrect use of (or, generally, the lack of correct) punctuation throughout the book. Many battles are fought over the Oxford comma, but it's not correct to have a sentence like, “I'm going to be late, Dad!” without the comma before “Dad”. It's the difference between “Let's eat Grandma” and “Let's eat, Grandma”, to quote an internet meme I've seen a hundred times. And this book was full of mistakes like that. I read a lot of children's books (I used to be the buyer for the children's department in a big chain of bookshops), and I've never seen an author omit that sort of comma. I don't know why Walliams did it, or why nobody corrected it, but it irritated me no end. Children learn how to write by reading, and if they read it and it's wrong, they're going to learn it wrong. For that reason alone I wouldn't give this book to my children (or pupils, if I were a teacher).
So...it's a sweet story, and goodness knows we need more stories about accepting people and embracing their differences. And I quite enjoyed Walliams' writing style (lots of directly addressing the reader and sharing in-jokes with them). But what drove me absolutely bonkers was the incorrect use of (or, generally, the lack of correct) punctuation throughout the book. Many battles are fought over the Oxford comma, but it's not correct to have a sentence like, “I'm going to be late, Dad!” without the comma before “Dad”. It's the difference between “Let's eat Grandma” and “Let's eat, Grandma”, to quote an internet meme I've seen a hundred times. And this book was full of mistakes like that. I read a lot of children's books (I used to be the buyer for the children's department in a big chain of bookshops), and I've never seen an author omit that sort of comma. I don't know why Walliams did it, or why nobody corrected it, but it irritated me no end. Children learn how to write by reading, and if they read it and it's wrong, they're going to learn it wrong. For that reason alone I wouldn't give this book to my children (or pupils, if I were a teacher).