Bound To Stay Bound

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Booklist - 01/01/2017 *Starred Review* The “best wrangler west of the Mississippi,” Lexie can handle horses, lariats, and cattle with ease, but especially excels as a word wrangler. She ties words together, turning butter and fly into butterfly. She grows a into age, sage, and sagebrush. She herds words into sentences, and sentences into stories. But one day, a missing d turns Lexie’s bandana into a banana. That night, a twinkling S-T-A-R turns into R-A-T-S. Yep, a word rustler is on the loose. The mischief gets sillier when the rascal turns the desert into a dessert, but he meets his match in Lexie, who finds better uses for his talents. An appended glossary defines terms such as dogies, chuck wagon, and varmint. Colorful language abounds in the clever, playful text, which will amuse kids whose work on reading has given them a heightened awareness of the written word. Teachers, meanwhile, will appreciate the references to compound words, anagrams, and other wordplay. Created in a rather childlike style that perfectly suits the story’s droll, understated tone, Hartland’s expressive gouache paintings include enough detail to help kids visualize the scenes, while illustrating the action with considerable wit. Highly recommended for reading aloud, just for the fun of it. - Copyright 2017 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 03/01/2017 K-Gr 2—Lexie is the "best wrangler west of the Mississippi, and everyone [knows] it." She is not just any kind of wrangler. Lexie captures letters and words with her lasso and puts them together to form new ones. She transforms a "p-e-s-t" into a group of furry "p-e-t-s" and lassoes an ear of corn and a loaf of bread to make "cornbread." One day, Lexie notices that letters and words are going missing or are unnecessarily being introduced at her ranch (the "dogies" become "doggies" after someone unleashes a gaggle of lowercase g's, for instance). Lexie goes on a mission to find the culprit and stop all of the word madness. While introducing spelling, compound words, and the intricacies of language to young readers is essential, this might not be the best place to start. Many of the words that Lexie wrangles are spelled out with her lasso in an exaggerated, curvy script that will not be accessible to those learning these concepts. There are many examples of Lexie's "word wrangling" throughout that interrupt the flow of the narrative, stopping it in its tracks at times. Hartland's bright gouache illustrations capture the many colors of the American West as well as various aspects of the cowboy lifestyle. A "dictionary of wrangler words" appears in the back matter for those who may not be familiar with the many cowgirl terms used in the book. VERDICT An additional purchase for those looking for stories about spelling and cowgirls.—Christopher Lassen, BookOps: The New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library - Copyright 2017 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

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