I thought this book was very cute and illustrated a common issue for children who have names that are not phonetic. I like the way the teacher accepts Phoebe where she is with writing. I also appreciated that the class appeared to be multicultural. A great book for reading at the beginning of kindergarten.

I received this book from Netgalley for an honest review
Phoebe and her class are practicing name writing. Phoebe's name does not sound the way that it is spelled and that is confusing for her. That was the bases of the story but there was also a lot of Phoebes rain boots and it didn't quite fit in the story. The title made me think that it was a book about sounding out letters, but the first couple of pages made me think that it was a book about rain boots.

Phoebe is trying to learn to write her name, but the letters of her name just don't align with what she has learned about letter sounds. However, "Feeeby" is off to a great start.

Simple, bright illustrations and an emphasis on early letter recognition make this a great pick for older toddlers and preschoolers.

Phoebe attempts to write her name, but the letters she has seen stitched on her backpack do not match the letter sounds she knows.

I'm not a huge fan of the illustrations. I think it is more of the unusual color tones. I do love the diversity represented though.

As an early childhood educator, I completely understand this book and the content. Sharing this title with parents of young children can help them to understand why their child brings home papers with misspelled words. This is a wonderful introduction for parents to phonemic awareness and a child's ability to manipulate individual sounds, or phonemes, in spoken words.

I don't think this book would be a huge hit in story time, but more of an educational tool to help parents understand how and why we do certain activities in an early childhood classroom.

My 7 year old son read this book to my 5 year old son. They had a different reaction to this book than I did.
My youngest was tickled most about Phoebe's boots. He enjoyed the book and he said that Phoebe sounding out her name reminding him of the Gingerbread man because he thought the first letter should have been "J".
My big boy thought the book ended too fast. He wanted to know how the teacher helped Phoebe with understand about spelling her name. He also had more comments about the boots and Phoebe's phonetic issues.

My overall impression was this book that it seemed a tad disjointed. It started off about boots, but then turned into kindergarten kids spelling their names. I actually didn't think much about the boots. It was actually a distraction. I also didn't understand the introduction of the second teacher Ms. April who enjoyed music. It didn't fit. It didn't seem to flow what I felt was the main theme of the book, which I loved. It was a joy following the steps Phoebe took as she worked to write her name. I would have liked the author to concentrate on the name, and how certain words have a phonetic sound different from the actual spelling. The boots thing could have been a separate story. My kids found that aspect entertaining.

My rating for this book would have been a 3-star, but my kids thought it was a 4-star book. Thus, I will settle in the middle. My youngest did ask me to read it again tomorrow, but he wants to wear his boots when I read it.
So clearly, my son related to Phoebe's footwear.

In this book Phoebe is practicing sounding out and writing her name and while she doesn't get it quite right she tries hard and has fun, the story didn't really go anywhere for me but its a nice enough book, and Phoebe is a typical child of her age! It has some nice drawings too