A playful way to teach kids how to correctly write sentences. By showing a funny picture of the wrong way first, it cements the idea (and the importance) of how to write right.

Reading this as an adult, even I learned from this adorable book on participles. (Not sure if I've been using participles wrong in the past, but I sure do know how to pay better attention to using them correctly!)

Lots of (super cute) illustrations are included to show the outrageous situations of what your sentences might actually sound like when the participle is in the wrong place -- as compared to the corrected versions of the sentences.

Educational, and fun to read!

If you've been wondering about what a dangling particle is or need a refresher course then this is the book for you. Plus, unlike college textbooks, this one teaches you how not to dangle those participles in fun and colorful ways.

Don't Dangle Your Participle opens with a brief two-page description of what a participle is and how it can dangle to help explain. What follows are sets of pages that at first show an incorrect sentence with pictures that humorously depict what is accidentally being said. Then, it shows what the correct sentence is with a corrected picture.

Overall, Don't Dangle Your Participle would be a great addition for a school classroom or library. It's got humorous way about it that can engage a reader and help teach some of the lessons of grammar that sometime elude us. However, I also don't necessarily see this as a book you might read over and over for fun or read as a bedtime story.

Don't Dangle Your Participle is a picture book that uses humorous illustrations to explain participles and why you shouldn't dangle them. While younger kids might be amused with the examples, I think older elementary + students would gain the most value out of reading this book.

The book showcases eight examples: first the wrong way, then the next page we see the correct way to use a participle. Perhaps students could play around with the sentences and rewrite them, or come up with their own wacky sentences to edit.

I had my 10-year-old son take a look, and he thought the illustrations were well done. The examples made sense to him.

Would recommend for classrooms and school libraries.

Thanks to NetGalley and Vanita Books for providing me with a free digital review copy.

A cute and funny book that will make learning and practicing proper grammar fun for little kids. And maybe a fun reminder of some of the rules of grammar for adults too

This is a fun way of how to introduce grammar to children. Funny illustrations represent the wrong sentences.

This book is hilarious. I loved the pictures and scenarios that were chosen to illustrate the lesson. I didn't love all of the "correct" sentences. They didn't seem like things that would reasonably used.

Don't Dangle Your Participle by Vanita Oelschlager is a book that teaches in an interesting way or story form. If you are a teacher or a young one this is a helpful book. The story with pictures help teach about dangling participles through showing incorrect ways of word placement in the sentence. It works very well and helps remember as well as being fun. Then it shows the proper way the participle needs to be placed in the sentence. It is done well., but I also think it could be confusing if not explained a little more clearly by a knowledgeable person to clarify some details when reading. Everyone should read this helpful and fun book though.

If there is a way to talk grammar and actually have fun in the conversation, Vanita Oelschlager has found it. This book was colorful, engaging, and I would gladly use it in instruction or for a read aloud. Well done.

I enjoyed the art work in this one, along with the witty sentences she used for examples, excellent pairing! The explanation was intensive yet still very simple (I was wondering how she was going to breakdown a participle to a 5-7 year old in 2 quick pages, she did it expertly). Definitely recommending her to our home-school groups, the moms would LOVE THIS!

This is a cute book and I love that the author donates all profits to charity, but it seems that it could use some tweaking. The first two pages explain a little bit of what a participle is (a verb that is used as an adjective, such as "the growling lion") but then it doesn't do a very good job of explaining what a dangling participle is ("a participle that has lost its way" that seems to modify the wrong noun).

Comical illustrations then make up the book, where one page shows a badly written sentence where the participle seems to be modifying the wrong noun with funny interpretations. The second page then shows the sentence written "correctly." That said, the corrected sentences were often awkward and odd, and could have been written much more clearly if they were reworded completely. The example sentences didn't strike me as mistakes that anybody would actually make, and I would have liked some examples of when good writers actually do accidentally dangle their participles, so to speak.

This would be good to get from the library as part of a unit on parts of speech, especially if kids were encouraged to then come up with their own examples.

My rating system:
1 = hated it
2 = it was okay
3 = liked it
4 = really liked it
5 = love it, plan to purchase, and/or would buy it again if it was lost

I read a temporary digital ARC of the book for the purpose of review.

I like the idea of this book and the illustrations are wonderful. I think the participle point of the book could be confusing for a lot of children. The way the first two pages begin made it hard for me to want to read the book. Once the actual story part happens though, the book is quite nice. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this for free!

I received an electronic copy from Vanita Books through NetGalley.
An informative text for middle graders. Oelschlager provides examples of sentence structures that work and those that don't. She begins by explaining participles and walking the reader through one example (growling lion). Following this, she provides illustrations of sentences that clearly don't say what the writer intends along with clearly written sentences. The illustrations provide further information on each lesson.

It’s a great book for teaching grammar. I would probably recommend to a teacher for their classroom or a homeschooling parent.

Don’t Dangle you Participle is author Vanita Oelschlager introduction on participles. At the beginning of the book, there is a good explanation of what a participle is. Each participle is listed on two separate pages, one incorrect and one correct. Both pages have an illustration to explain the authors' examples. The illustrations are cute and very helpful in explaining the author’s examples. A cute book with funny examples to help a child who is struggling with the concept of the participle. This book could also be a great supplement in schools, libraries or homeschooling families.

Don’t Dangle Your Participle was written by Vanita Delschlager. It is a grammar book written for children, and is meant to show what a dangling participle is, and how to fix it.
The very beginning of this book has a section discussing the grammar behind the book, and the following pages contain humorous pictures and examples of dangling participles.
My Thoughts: I don’t know that this book should just be handed to a child. The grammar behind participles is discussed in detail at the beginning, but is written for someone who really understands grammar.
I believe the perfect application for this book would be with a teacher explaining the grammar section, and then showing students the pictures.
The pictures in this book are wonderful. They give great (and funny) examples to explain to children why a dangling participle can make a really big difference in a sentence.
In conclusion, if you need to teach a child about dangling participles, this book is a fun way to do it.
I would like to thank VanitaBooks for providing me with a free digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The only thing wrong about this book is that it wasn't around when my children were growing up.

With truly delightful artwork by Mike DeSantis, author Vanita Oelschlager offers up some silly examples of dangling participles: a deer on a skateboard; a girl blowing away in the wind; a girl melting while eating ice cream, and so on. It's sure to make youngsters smile and giggle while teaching them a valuable lesson about the English language.

It's the sort of book that, had I had this when my children were growing up, we would have read it, laughed, and then spent time making up our own dangling participles to try to get each other to laugh some more.

What prevents me from giving this a full five stars is that some of the correct sentences (after reading the sentence with the dangling participle, we get a correct sentence) are very clumsy. For instance... the dangling participle sentence reads:

"Melting in the hot sun, Ida rushed to finish her ice cream."

And of course there's a picture of a girl melting into the sidewalk.

But the correct version reads:

"Melting in the hot sun, the ice cream had to be finished quickly by Ida."

Isn't it a less clumsy sentence to say:

"The ice cream had to be finished quickly by Ida before it melted in the hot sun" or "The ice cream had to be finished quickly by Ida because it was melting in the hot sun"?

All in all, a good book for children.

Looking for a good book? Don't Dangle Your Participle by Vanita Oelschlager is just what a good picture book ought to be ... fun to read and educational.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Wonderful teaching about grammar. Honesty could be used for college students if they get past the children's book format. It does actually make grammar fun.

I thought this book did not know if it was non-fiction or fiction. I also felt it was geared towards younger kids, but really was for older kids. Cute concept though.

This is cute and I appreciated the fun lesson.

I used to love to diagram sentences in English class when I was in early school years. (My son totally disliked diagramming even though he was an excellent student.) The beginning of this book explains the verb and the participle adjective to describe a noun. The authors then show how dangling participles change the meaning of a sentence, often making no sense or nonsense. The illustrations and text give many fun examples of a sentence in error and then its correction:

Incorrect example: Growling as they ate, the children gathered around the lions’ cage.
Correct example: Growling as they ate, the lions attracted the children to their cage.

The beginning technical discussion and even some of the examples may not work for very young children, so it is important to use this with the appropriate age group who are at this level of learning. The illustrations by Mike Desantis are active, cute and highlight the examples very well. The sentences are also fun, creating some very silly situations that children can enjoy.

I did feel that several of the corrected sentences were awkward. I think this is because there could have been a clearer written statement without using the participle. Setting that aside, I think this book makes a good tool to help explain the participle and correct use.

Source: 2019 NetGalley.