Customer Reviews

Martha Blah Blah

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was lucky enough to come across this book while searching for a birthday gift for a little friend of mine. I was intrigued by the title, picked it up, and then had to read the ENTIRE thing. What a fabulous book!

The words are clearly printed on a white background, the pictures are large and colorful, and the humor in what Martha says will keep readers of all ages entertained.

Not only does the story deal with standing up for what you need, but I found that I could use this in my practice as a speech-language pathologist. Martha, when she eats alphabet soup, gains the ability to speak because all the letters go into her brain instead of to her stomach. But when some letters are left out, she has trouble communicating. When she gets all her letters, she can communicate just fine. A lesson! Wow!

I've read a lot of children's books, and this is a gem. Don't miss it.

Martha Blah Blah is about a dog who can speak when she eats alphabet soup. With her new-found language, Martha has adventures, helps people and animals and learns new things. She does have a dilemma, but she overcomes it to save the day. The illustrations in this book enhance the story. The illustrator uses large watercolor images that are humorous and does a good job of showing what is going on in the story. The author uses words that make the book easy to understand and employs a large font so that they are easy to read. The author also includes footnotes in some parts of the book, which can draw the attention away from the illustrations to the footnotes. Without the footnotes, however, one would not be able to decipher what Martha is saying when she loses her voice. Even though the footnotes draw attention away from the illustrations one can have fun trying and decipher what Martha is saying and then the answer is at the bottom of the page. In a small way, the footnotes make one think while reading the book. I believe that this book is entertaining and sparks the imagination. Like most children' books, it has a happy ending, which makes the story even more likable. Overall, I think that Martha Blah Blah is an excellent children's book that deserves to be read.

Martha the talking dog is back in the third (and best) book of the series. Martha depends on Granny's Brand alphabet soup to enable her to talk, but when greedy Granny decides to cut costs by leaving out half of the alphabet, Martha is left incommunicado, until she finds a way to tweak Granny's corporate conscience into honoring her quality control standards! This book is a real killer-diller with kids aged 5-8, leaving them rolling on the rug at Martha's attempts to communicate with letters missing from her vocabulary. (This title is a Tennessee Volunteer Children's Choice nominee for 1999-00 and gets my students' votes for the award winner)

Martha still speaks ater eating alphabet soup, and everything is fine until the new owner of the soup company decides to save money by eliminating half the letters. No one can understand what Martha is saying anymore. Footnotes let you know Martha's intents, and eventually she solves the problem in an amusing way. Kids enjoy these Martha stories.

I read this book to my nephew, not knowing how completely hysterical the Martha series is.

The illustrations, including the very funny side dialogues, is straight-forward and not at all confusing. You can read the book to smaller children without the side dialogue, and they'll still understand it. Older kids can read the dialogue out loud and be just as entertained.

The story isn't scary, and does give a few good but not preachy lessons: avoid being greedy, don't abuse the telephone (there's a great picture of Martha yakking away on the telephone and getting reprimanded), and that being understood when you speak is very important.

Lots of fun, quick little story, ideal for bedtime. I highly recommend it.

This is my favorite Martha book and one of the few children's books I have found with good labor politics (_Cows That Type_ is another).

*An inspirational book! Heightens the child's awareness of the importance of the sounds that different letters make (great fun for phonemic awareness). My 5 year old got a kick out of decoding Martha's garbled messages. **It makes reading fun.

I recently had the pleasure of reading this book to my 3 yr old niece. What fun! The story is entertaining, the little extras (Every Letter in Every Can!) keep the adult amused. My sister-in-law threatened to take the book away from me, because I kept stopping to laugh at some piece of silliness. (we don't read every detail to the child- she's entertained enough by the story) I especially enjoyed reading Martha's garbled words out loud, and the family sing-a-long my niece insists on for Martha's ABCs

The whole series holds an important place on our bookshelf. When everyone's favorite dog loses her words, we read on, hoping she'll get her words back before Granny Flo ruins everything. Even though the ages are 4-8, as soon as we got the books, the adults, 10 year old and 8 year old plunged in. We even named our dog Martha!

Martha is a great communicator just like the book says! We love Martha books as much as the TV show! Martha always has words of wisdom and doesn't hesitate to share them.

In this book Martha's letters get all mixed up and her words make no sense. When the alphabet soup company decides to short change their product and not put all of the letters into their soup it causes remarkable consequences for Martha. No one can understand her! What a great lesson for beginning readers just trying to understand how letters fit together to make real words. And, the illustrations depict detailed facial expressions engaging the reader and allowing them to understand the story simply by looking at the pictures! As Martha solves her dilema children can follow the path she takes from beginning to end. The entire family is invloved in this story.

This is a wonderful Martha book showing warmth and personal resolve with literacy lessons wonderfully included!