Crazy Like a Fox: A Simile Story Paperback – Picture Book, September 15, 2009

I always love using this book to teach similes!

This book lends itself to enhancing students' knowledge and skills in using figurative language. The colorful pictures attract my second language learners, who are also from low socio-economic communities, with limited background knowledge. My students love the book, and often ask me if they could borrow it. The first couple of weeks I took the book to my class, I encouraged them to read in pairs so one of them could guess the phrase on the next page. When I read the book to my five year old son, he just couldn't have enough. For a couple of days he read it aloud several times, carrying it all around the house. My son and students feel validated whenever they guess the right word or phrases that complete the simile. I am actually thinking of buying more copies to distribute to kids.

My four year old daughter loves this book. As another reviewer said, the text can be hard to read because 1 simile starts, then the page is filled with other similes in small text, and then the first simile finishes on the next page. I've found reading it is more enjoyable for me if I read the similes in small text first, then read the simile in the large text all at once. The pictures are really wonderful and show the animal changing with each simile. For example "as noisy as a herd of elephants" is paired with a lot of animals drawn with elephant trunks. The book has also inspired my daughter to invent her own similes, so it's very educational.

Cute book

I am an elementary school teacher and have been teaching similes for years, but never so successfully as I have since buying this book. The kids really love it! The cartoonish pictures are humorous and give kids a visual to remember each simile. Reading this book helps build vocabulary and descriptive language. I had to explain some of the similes but the kids loved it so much they begged to read it on their own during silent reading. Toward the end of the year, some students even started using similes when writing their creative stories. This is one of the best educational books ever and I wish I would have found it years ago.

It really helped my students understand the difference between a metaphor and a simile (I also used You're Toast). While I didn't find it as effective as "You're Toast, it conveyed the idea. Add Love That Dog + Hate That Cat (Sharon Creech) and you'll have your kiddos finding literary devices in their own independent reading.

So much is going on in this book. We've started with just reading the main line on each page. Then periodically reading some of the other lines on the pages. Sometimes we just flip through and look at the pictures. My 4 and 2 yr old enjoy it.

We love Rufus and Babette story! What a fantastic book to learn about friendship and oh yeah.. similes too! Our kids 7,4 and 1 always pick this book, they never get tired of hearing this story. Yes, learning similes could be great fun!

Great condition