I Yam Who I Yam! You Loves Ewe! by Cece Bell

"Hey, donkeys!" says Donkey.

It's a lovely bucolic scene. Sheep is grazing, and Yam the grammarian-in-chief is pontificating, as usual.

Yam points out that neither of them is a donkey. He himself is a yam and his herbivorous companion is a fluffy ewe, doing what ewes do best--look cute and eat grass.

But Donkey doesn't do homonyms.

"I yam confused. Yam I yam, or yam I ain't, cute and fluffy?"

Yam gives it another try, explaining that the grammatical way to pose that question would be "Am I cute and fluffy?"

Donkey looks at Yam and doesn't bother being polite.

You is short and lumpy.

Sheep tries to help out by holding up her hand-written placard that says EWE. Donkey corrects Yam's pronunciation, pointing out that EWE spells EE-WEE! Yam goes into his standard lecture on homonyms, words that sound alike but have different meanings: Doe and Dough, Hair and Hare, etc., etc., etc.!

And if you think this grammar lesson is going nowhere, just wait until Ram makes his entrance and is struck instantly with Ewe's woolly charms. Now everyone is in love with Ewe. What to do?

But while Donkey is a bit dense with homonyms, he gets affairs of the heart. He points out that Ewe gets to choose. Does Ewe love Ram? She spells it out for them all.

"EYE DEW."

It's the wonderful world of wordplay, in Cece Bell's forthcoming easy reader, You Loves Ewe! (A Yam and Donkey Book) in this semi-educational sequel to her first comical Yam and Donkey story, I Yam a Donkey! (A Yam and Donkey Book), specializing in some of the goofier aspects of our native language (just be glad he didn't work in the homonym YEW into the text), while her delightfully daffy black line cartoon illustrations make the best of this woolly-headed tale of the fine points of our mother tongue. After all, we English speakers do specialize in puns.

Ewer kids are gonna love it!

"Grammar Don't Matter!" I Yam A Donkey by Cece Bell

.. . DID YOU SAY, "I YAM A DONKEY?"

THE PROPER WAY IS TO SAY THAT IS "I AM A DONKEY."

YOU IS A DONKEY, TOO?" SNORTS DONKEY. "YOU IS A FUNNY-LOOKING DONKEY."

A pedantic sweet potato in pince nez spectacles should've known better when he takes on the task of instructing a toothy donkey in proper English usage.

"NO, I AM A YAM. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO SAID 'I AM A DONKEY.'"

The grammarian yam is going nowhere fast with this linguistic lesson. The donkey insists on hearing "I yam" and "I am" as the same. Furthermore, he has no apparent familiarity with the conjugation of the verb "to be."

"YOU IS SILLY!"

But a good grammarian never gives up! Yam proceeds through the conjugation: I AM...YOU ARE, SHE IS....

The argument begins to draw a crowd: "Grammar fight!" Beet yells to a carrot and three green beans.

Beet explains that while Donkey IS a critter, he, Green Beans and Carrot ARE vegetables. Donkey gets a message, but not the one Yam intended.

"OH! YOU IS LUNCH!"

The lesson ends in a not-exactly-unexpected MUNCH and CRUNCH, in Cece Bell's newest, I Yam a Donkey! (Houghton Mifflin Clarion Books, 2015), which just goes to show that... well..., um... er.... "Don't get into a grammatical dispute with a donkey if you are a YAM?" Not a whole lot of linguistic information gets imparted here, but this book offers comic characters and a super silly slice of wordplay about a minor point of pronunciation of "I am"..., and gives Newbery Honor author Bell a chance to play around with words and the painful point that some arguments are futile in the face of serious issues, like how a vegetable should dispute with a large, big-molared herbivore.... Very discretely and from a safe distance?

Cece Bell is also the author and illustrator of the award-winning El Deafo, Rabbit and Robot: The Sleepover (Candlewick Sparks), and Tom Angleberger's Crankee Doodle (see review here.)