With a title that broadcasts the classic mantra, Show; Don't Tell: Secrets of Writing by Josephine Nobisso, illus. by Eva Montanari, acts as a manual based on the author's writing workshops. Prompts to incorporate tactile, audio and olfactory details help kids focus on their senses when writing; a cast of animal characters-rendered in whimsical acrylics and pencil-lead aspiring authors along with brief tips and words of wisdom. .

According to an author's note, this book aims to improve readers' writing by "shed[ding] light on the deepest application of grammar in the most concrete manner." However, you wouldn't know it from the text, which suffers from a paucity of examples. Furthermore, the main text is hard to distinguish from the running commentary made by the all-animal cast appearing throughout.

Gr 3-6-This sophisticated picture book attempts to demystify the writer's craft, offering insight into authors' most crucial decisions: their choice of specific nouns and adjectives. Montanari's whimsical animal characters represent students in a writers' workshop. The lion urges his classmates to engage in a "language arts experiment," in which the directions and the animals' playful antics are splashed at many angles about the dreamscape pages. Indeed, the alluring illustrations achieve the "daydream state" to which Nobisso declares "writers go for story." Having made this clear and convincing pitch for selecting powerful nouns and adjectives, the author continues with a preachy section on the senses and figurative language, which is unoriginal despite some interactive "bells and whistles," including scratch-and-sniff pages and a sound module. The text is tedious for students who need clear explanations, the cuddly animals belie the complexity of the concepts, and the layout often makes reading difficult.-Gloria Koster, West School, New Canaan, CT Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.