Baloney (Henry P.)

For SciFy/Modern Fantasy, I chose the book Baloney by Joe Scieszka and Lane Smith.

This book is about an alien student similar to Earthings. He is late to school one too many times. When his teacher asks his why, he comes up with a lengthy excuse that is very implausible. What was fascinating about the book is that some key words are not in English, making the story and Henry's character seem even more alien. There are 2 points I like about this: 1- it exposes readers to common words in other languages and could pique their interest in learning other languages and 2- with the help of the pictures, children could guess what the words mean, or create their own idea of what the words could mean. It is helpful that the changed words are presented in a different color to help identify that they are not English, and the back of the book has a 'Decoder' (glossary) for all the words.

I can not really connect this book to any of the Social Justice points directly, however, this could lead into a fun activity for teachers and students and have them explore different languages. Students could write their own short story, and then using their own nationalities, change some of the words. Students could trade stories with each other and they could learn some new words in different languages and also learn to respect each others' cultures.