When was the last time you had a mouthful of Ps? Yup, Ps not peas. Maybe this question has you thinking back to your childhood when you checked out a book of tongue twisters from your library that drove your tongue crazy. Remember Peter Piper who picked a peck of pickled peppers? And how about…
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood? He would chuck, he would, as much as he could and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
Did you know that tongue twisters are used for articulation exercises by public speakers such as actors and television hosts?
Keep in mind that it isn’t how quickly you can say the tongue twister that counts, but how clearly you can enunciate the words.
Although today’s picture book isn’t written as a traditional tongue twister, the sheer number of words starting and containing Ps, makes it feel like one. So, without further ado, here is the mouthful of Ps I mentioned earlier–Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut, a picture book packed with page after page of perfectly peachy, pleasing P words paired with other particularly pleasant-to-say P words.
Title – Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut – view on Amazon HERE.
Written by – Margaret Atwood
Illustrated by – Maryann Kovalski
Published by – Workman Publishing – 1995
Suitable for ages – 3-7
Topics/Theme – Prideful snobbery, tolerance, acceptance
Opening –Princess Prunella lived in a pink palace with her pinheaded parents, Princess Patty and Prince Peter, her three plump pussycats, Patience, Prue and Pringle, and her puppy dog, Pug.
Like I said earlier, this book provides a mouthful of Ps. (There are 68 P’s on the next page alone!)
Why do I like this book? When I first checked out this book, about five years ago, my daughter and I tried to see how tongue-tied we could get by reading this story as fast as possible. Try it, I can pretty much promise you a powerfully pleasing plethora of plentiful laughter. Having said that, reading a book in which the author has hand-selected as many P words as possible, makes for a positive reading experience. And the pretty illustrations are particularly pleasing, too!
Just for fun, try writing a tongue twister.
Choose a letter that you like the sound of.
Create a character whose first and last names start with that letter.
Make a list of nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives that start with that letter.
Try switching up the vowel sounds that follow the first letter like:
Peter picked a patch of pulpy potatoes.
Or… Find words with similar sounding vowel sounds like:
Carla carted cartons of carrots in her car.
See if you can come up with a fun-to-say tongue twister.
Here’s the one I came up with.
Douglas Diffy daintily danced with his daffy dalmatian in his dusty dining room.
Until next Friday!
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