Oh Say Can You Say?, by Dr. Seuss

Specifics
Oh Say Can You Say? by Dr. Seuss
Published by Random House, 1979

Target Audience
Lexile level NP
This book would be best for a read aloud, kindergarten to third grade, readers second to fourth grades.

Summary
This book is a classic Dr. Seuss book. It is a collection of 24 incredible hard tongue-twisters. Each page/two pages there is a new tongue twister. Maybe having the students each read one to a partner would be a good way of having them read and figure out exactly what makes these tongue-twisters.

Evaluation
This book was written incredibly well, the language flowed in a way that was so hard to read out loud, which, of course, is the point. The characters are fun to read about, and, of course, are either made up creatures or not very realistic. Each character did fit the setting they were put into. The illustrations make it obvious that this is a Dr. Seuss book, in that few of them are really human, and a lot of them are creatures. This book was just so much fun to read.

Lesson
What I would love to do with this book is to have each student try to read one of these tongue- twisters out loud, and then create their own tongue twister about anything they want. The anatomy of a tongue twister would be taught, with the literary elements of assonance, alliteration, and oxymorons being used throughout this whole text, and, hopefully, in the students' own tongue twisters, too.