Lewis, J. (2009). Spot the Plot. San Francisco, California: Chronicle Books. NCTE Excellence in Children’s Poetry Award, 2011. For Ages: 4-8.

Personal Response: The style of writing and the illustrations in this book are a lot like books I read as a child. The riddles are similar to Dr. Suess’. However, I like that the reader must prior knowledge about stories in order to fully enjoy this riddle book. It encourages the reader to read books they have not already previously read. I like the way the answer to the clues are listed as the book titles on the last page. This helps young readers to understand that the riddles are about real books that they can actually obtain and read for themselves.

Literary Response: The literary theme of this book is storybook plots. It seems the author’s purpose is to engage young readers with a fun “game” and have them attempt to solve the mystery of the storybook plot. This technique should cause the reader to self-evaluate. After reading the plot of some books that weren’t previously read, the reader’s interest for reading more should be sparked. The illustrations are also based around the theme of storybook plots. Each riddle’s illustration depicts the plot of the “book of topic”. The illustrator cleverly uses characters from the “book of topic” as clues to guide the reader to discovering plots.