Baloney (Henry P.)

Henry P. Baloney is late to school again. However, this time he tells his teacher exactly why he was late: he was accidentally dropped onto a launch pad and was blasted into space! He uses his imagination to get out of several scary predicaments, but all of his adventures in space made him seven minutes late to school. Even though Henry is from another world, he has problems just like any other student on Earth.
This story includes words written in multiple languages from Swahili to Estonian to Welsh. The words look make-believe and appear to not make any sense in the book. However, the book includes a decoder in the back and offers students the English word for translation. It also names the language used so students are exposed to show more language and word styles of other cultures. The other language words thrown into the story are intentional in order to help students relate it to beginning reader when words just look like gibberish. The writing style is also all capitals to help younger students who only recognize upper case letters. The plot is fun for students as Henry must use his imagination to get out of sticky situations and the theme of the book is focused around how Henry's life parallels that of any Earthling who is trying to make excuses for being late.
Media: colored pencils, pen, digital production
Genre: Picture book, modern fantasy for other worlds (planets) and special characters (aliens). "I jammed the wrong buttuna, and ended up on the planet Astrosus." show less

This book is tooooo cute!!
So this space alien kid is late to school AGAIN. The teacher is fed up with his tardies and expects a legitimate excuse. This kid proceeds to tell an elaborate, unbelievable story where all these wild events occur before he was seven minutes late to school. In the meantime, the author chose to use these made-up-sounding words like "razzo" instead of "rocket" and "zimulis" instead of "pencil." The teacher says it's unbelievable and essentially tells him to go sit and write it down because today's assignment is to compose a tall tale. He then responds, "I'd love to but I seem to have misplaced my zimulis." The book's pictures give detail to these twenty wacky, spacey-sounding words by using a picture by them show more when used for clarification. It's also easy to understand them from the context in which they're used. Here's the kicker though: the last page in a slanted text, Star-Wars like fashion, reveals to the reader that these twenty replacement words were actually those words from nineteen other languages (and one spoonerism!) Zimulis is Latvian for pencil; razzo is Italian for rocket. This was such a cool idea! I really liked this book! show less

Not really a perfect fit with my taste, but bold, funny, and with a terrific surprise ending. My library's edition has a shiny silver cover which is better. I tell you what, sometimes I think Jon & Lane sniff glue or something, but then I remember that it is possible to get this high on life if you just give yourself permission!

Henry P Baloney is good at making up a tall tale. He comes to class late and makes up a whole long story about what held him up. Then his teacher says that their assignment for today is to write their own tall tale and then he starts to tell a reason why he cannot do that. The author uses funny sounding words all throughout this story, some of these were "zimulus." This makes it very fun to read. The story is creative and the images are interesting alien figures that differ from the average alien you might typically think of. I think this is a great book to encourage kids to be creative like Henry P Baloney, who lived up to his name of making up pure baloney.

A really fun and imaginative way to get children reading and using their imaginations. The book features Baloney, an alien, and his language, that as we read we discover that all those fun word that we are saying are just words from other languages placed in funny places. The book is comical, and fun, but also a good way to introduce our students to what it feels like to experience language barriers.

This book was very cute and clever. It is about a young alien named Henry, who needs a good excuse to tell his teacher about why he is late for school or else he gets lifetime detention. Henry’s excuse is full of crazy adventures and his dialogue uses unique words that sound as though they are from outer space. At the end of the book you learn that the alien language is actually words from all different languages across the world.

This is my first time hearing about this book and I must say my first thought was "what in the world is this book talking about!" As I continued reading and caught on, it ended up being an overall cute yet clever picture book. It is a very silly and fun book I think small children would enjoy. The different incorporation of unique words was interesting to see in a book. I think this can help discuss possible issues of language barriers as well as discipline problems.