To Root, to Toot, to Parachute: What Is a Verb?

Words Are CATegorical ®

by Brian P. Cleary, Jenya Prosmitsky (Illustrator)

What is a verb? It's easier to show than explain! In this fun and animated introduction to grammer, rhyming verse is used to creatively clarify the concept of verbs. Chock-full of colorful, lively examples, the playful rhymes and illustrations of comical cartoon cats combine to hightlight key words in the sentences. Verbs like toss and tumble, jump and jam, jog and juggle, jig and leap are printed in color for easy identification.

Genres: Picture Books, Nonfiction, Childrens, Humor, School, Writing, 1st Grade

32 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2000

Reviews

[Dolly]

We really enjoy Brian P. Cleary's books. He makes learning fun, and this is a silly and humorous rhyming book about verbs. His books really entertain children while teaching them basic concepts; our girls really like them. The illustrations by Jenya Prosmitsky are cartoony and cute, too - we love the cats.

We've read many of the books in the Words are CATegorical series and we've really enjoyed them. We will certainly look for more books by this author/illustrator team at our local library.

[Michele]

Fun to read. Does a great job of showing what a verb is and how it is used in a sentence. The illustrations are colorful, silly and aid the text. The text highlights the verbs in a variety of colors.

[Daisey]

I think these books are a great way to remind kids of the different parts of speech. They are bright and fun. This book focuses on explaining action verbs while also mentioning to be verbs along with has and have. The key parts of speech in each book (in this case, the verbs) are in color, while the rest of the text is black. My only complaint with this book is that helping verbs/auxiliary verbs are not in color, and in some of the explanatory sentences, the verbs are not in color. For example, in "That is fun, it's been great, were you the one who was so late?" is, been, were, and was are in color, but the 's (for has) is not recognized as a verb. Also, in the sentence, "These verbs can tell us who's got what!" there are no color coded verbs.

[Shaheen]

I love the choices of words. It is delightfull way to teach action and linking werbs. The best part is to learn while having fun. The illustrations are busy with soothing colors. Silly, yet funny!!

[Mallory White]

SO CUTE! Great way to start verbs. It has great pictures that describe action words ex: sharpen your knife and make a design. Ask what is a verb at the end and the class can act out each describing verb so it sticks with them that a verb is doing!!

[Reid]

I like it because they pray and preach.

[Heather]

This is a silly book which explains verbs and then shows you all sorts of pictures of people/animals doing verby things - like rooting, tooting (a horn) and parachuting. The illustrations are funny and each verb is a different color than black so if a kid can read they can see the difference. The text also rhymes which makes it more "silly". The last two page spread doesn't have any words on it so the child can find their own verb. Even my 3-yr-old understood the concept and picked out some on his own.

A fun, non-threatening way to introduce, or review, parts of speech.

Highly recommended.

[Kerri Harshaw]

What a great verb book for students and teachers to read! All verbs used in this book are bold and colorful. The book goes through all types of verbs in the English language and provides many examples for fun and commonly used verbs. What a fun book! I would definitely read this book to students when working on verbs, and I would love to have it for students to use as a resource for their writing!

[Amber]

This book was a great book! I would really love to have this book on my bookshelf when I become a teacher. It is a book that could be used from 1st up to 3rd grade. It has all the ways a verb can be used and it gives illustrations for the book. I am using it for a verb lesson and I actually got some of the verbs I am using from it!

[Amber]

This book was such a good book! I used it last semester when talking to my 1st graders again about verbs before the CRCT. It was a fun book and a book that you can use and do plenty of activites with!

[Amy]

Good lesson about verbs. The book was full of examples of verbs, and it was very accessible to the children. I was a little confused about the was, were, etc. Verbs, but at least I now know that they are verbs, and that's more than I knew yesterday.

[Annette Steele]

Another Brian Cleary book. See my comments on Hairy, Scary, Ordinary... These are short picture books.

[Chocoholic]

These stories use poetry/rhyme and fun pictures to illustrate what can often be baffling English language rules and structure.

[Murlene]

Great verb book for students to get into. Its funny and the word are colorful and it makes it fun to learn about nouns.

[Nancy]

Cute cats teach all about verbs. Good for a lesson on the topic.

[Carissa Burton]

An important part of language arts in early childhood is learning verbs, or action words. Reading a book that is all about verbs is a great way to introduce what a verb is and how to use them. After searching, I found a great non-fiction children’s book that accurately gives examples of verbs. This book is called “To Root, to Toot, to Parachute: What is a Verb?” by Brian P. Cleary, illustrated by Jenya Prosmitsky. This book was published in 2001 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. It is intended for children ages 5-8. There are no known awards for this book. One reason why I selected this book is because the very first page of the book immediately gives the exact definition of a verb. The book also uses vivid illustrations and silly rhymes that will grab the attention of young children. Many full sentences are placed on each page with the verb highlighted in a different color, making it very easy for children to see how a verb is used in a sentence. The book begins by mentioning that “verbs are part of your everyday life,” and then continues on with many example sentences, while reminding children that “if it’s an action, it’s a verb!” (Cleary). The book ends by telling children that “each sentence, you see, simply must have a verb!” and then asks “so, what is a verb? Do you know?" (Cleary). This ending opens a discussion about what verbs are, how they are used and can lead into a verb activity to complete when working with young children in a classroom setting, such as a verb charades game. This book would be appealing to young readers because of the bright colors, the interesting illustrations and the ease of understanding what a verb is, making it so that they won't get frustrated and give up on reading this book.

[Elizabeth]

This book is a great book for children and classrooms alike. It demonstrates very clearly what a verb is and explains it in a way children will understand easily. The text in the book has the verbs in a different color so that the reader can see what the verb in that sentence is and see how it should be used. This book was very entertaining and the illustrations were well done and helped with the words to help the reader. I would recommend this book.

[Melissa]

Verb: "To dare, defend, descend, disturb - If it's an action, it's a verb!"

[Alyssa Smith]

Great book to teach verbs!

[Joshua]

I'm giving it a 4 because it has Toot in the title. It mentioned a lot of things. It could have only mentioned one thing.

[Heidi Trowbridge]

Date read: 10/29/20
Genre: Non-fiction
Age Range: 7-10
Reflection: This is fun rhyming book that would be perfect as an into to a lesson on verbs. It would definitely be engaging to children.

[Carol Carey]

An awesome way to explain verbs to younger and special needs students.

[Colin]

Part of an excellent series for kids about English grammar - this one is about verbs! It mostly focuses on the "action word" concept of verbs . . .

[Everett]

I liked it because it said, "toot"!

[Adrianne]

I love this series - I wish I had found it years ago. It is helping make English grammar tangible and visible for my visual learner.

[KaitandMaddie]

Maddie and I read these and did the activities orally. I’m going to use them as review for Kait over the summer.

[Shelby Rollenhagen]

As with all the others in this series, I got these to share with my children as a fun and cute way to discuss language and have not been disappointed. They are cute and engaging for kids.

[Kellee Moye]

Full review at: http://www.unleashingreaders.com/?p=2895

Teaching parts of speech is one of the hardest things to teach students, and it is even harder to teach them in a fun and interesting way. These books make it so that both of these things are possible. I like that each of the books focuses on only one part of speech instead of trying to teach multiple grammatical concepts thus making the chance of mastery much more likely. I also found the rhyming and silliness of the books just so endearing, and it would definitely help with the knowledge sticking.

[Nancy Kotkin]

Text: 4 stars
Illustrations: 4 stars

Part of a picture book series about language arts. The rhythmic text rhymes. Text is light on explanation and heavy on examples. Illustrations are cartoonish but provide strong visual clues to the text. Readers are asked to pick out the verbs in the last picture spread.

A couple of the verbs are made-up words ("oh-hi-ing" and "toodle-ooing"). One page spread is devoted to forms of "to be."

[Jennifer Bracken]

Informational

This book is a book all about verbs. It is a fun way for kids to learn about verbs; what they are and how to recognize them.

This is a great book to use when first introducing verbs to elementary school students. I know of some 2nd grade teachers that use it for that specific purpose.