Telephone

The game of Telephone becomes literal as a wide variety of birds sitting on a telephone wire pass on the message that Peter, a pigeon, is to come home for dinner, with silly results. Saturated color and birds who convey a lot of personality in a single sentence make this a fantastic book for read

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aloud or one on one reading.

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Theme: listen, then think before you speak.

"Does it make sense"
Cleverly illustrated (cute paper). Birds on a telephone wire need to tell Peter to fly home for dinner, when the message gets passed along it gets out of control with extravagant stories. This could teach kids to think before you

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speak.

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Telephone is a book that shows how messages can be misconstrued; fortunately, a wise owl knows this grape vine! I like this book for four reasons. To start, I like how the story is developed as each character, a different bird, receives, and then erroneously sends, the message to the next. I also

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like how each bird in the grape vine is dressed to represent the bias that leads to its misinterpretation of the message it received. For instance, a goose dressed as a pilot receives the message “Tell Peter: Hit pop flies and homers,” and relays it as “Tell Peter: Prop planes are for fliers.” This example also highlights another aspect of the writing that I like; how each new phrase sounds similar to the last, making more sense of the miscommunications. Finally, I like the surprise ending when the owl receives an irrational, paranoid set of instructions from a crazy bird, then calmly turns to Peter and says “Hey Peter. Your mom says fly home for dinner,” which was the original message.

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An absurd, witty take on the Telephone game that will give kids lots to giggle about.

A cute play on the game telephone put into words.

I've never actually successfully played the game Telephone, have you?  Nonetheless, the concept is fun and has inspired some great stories.  I particularly enjoyed this one because of the art style, and because the birds are sitting on the telephone wires.  The story itself is aimed at the

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little children who are the core audience for picture-books, though, and it didn't do much of anything for me.  Some will think it crazy funny. 

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Man, birds have really lousy hearing.