Wumbers (review)

Rosenthal and Lichtenheld offer up an homage to Steig's classic play on words C D B ! (BCCB 12/68) in this picture book game of inserting numerals into words in which the numeral's name is part of the word's pronunciation (for example, "l8ter" is "later"). A girl learning to play an instrument is captioned "She's learning to play a 2ne on the 2ba"; a balloon seller says, "4give me, 4 this is bel8ed, but it seems once again I have overinfl8ed" to the mother of a now airborne child. There's a useful range of difficulty to the "wumbers," from the simple "gr8" to the more challenging "I think it 7" ("I think it's heaven"); occasional higher-level vocabulary words (such as "bel8ed" and "4midable") will also provide some teachable moments. Younger children will likely need some adult guidance at first, but older or more word-savvy kids will likely be able to sort it out on their own. Lichtenheld's illustrations (rendered in ink and PanPastels), bright, primary colors, cartoonish figures, and heavy black outlines, keep the visuals lively, and the simplicity of the compositions keeps the focus tight, making it easy for kids to use the pictures to help figure out the meaning of the wumbers. This could easily be tied into elements of popular culture, such as similar word-number combinations on license plates and texting lingo, and could also serve as inspiration for kids to come up with their own wumbers.