THE CASE OF THE INCAPACITATED CAPITALS

Mr. Wright’s class learns the importance of capital letters in this latest from Pulver and Reed.

Feeling underused and ignored, the bandaged and splinted capital letters are not doing their job—they are incapacitated. But life goes on as usual in Mr. Wright’s class, the students not noticing the absence of the uppercases, even when they compose a letter. But Mr. Wright notices. “[W]riting a letter is not the same as texting.” His clueless class takes a while to cotton on to the problem, though, getting wrapped up in guessing Mr. Wright’s nickname. Humorous asides punctuate their teacher’s lesson on capitalization rules and the format for writing a letter (both of which are summed up in the backmatter). But when the kids try to correct their mistakes, they discover the deplorable condition of the uppercase letters. Luckily, the lowercase letters sent out an SOS, and the medics arrive to save the day. A fascinating note caps things off by explaining how capital and small letters got the monikers uppercase and lowercase. Reed’s acrylic-and-digital artwork sports her now-trademark style, childlike figures surrounded by doctored plastic fridge magnets. But this is not as strong as their other language-arts titles, Pulver taking too long setting up the story.

Still, this is a pretty painless way to teach capitalization and letter writing.