Happy Endings: A Story About Suffixes

Happy Endings: A Story About Suffixes
Written by: Robin Pulver
Illustrated by: Lynn Rowe Reed
Published: February 2011


With summer almost upon them, a class learns about suffixes. However, it is a struggle to get them motivated for the lesson. At one point, the students' teacher says that they will "tackle" suffixes. The suffixes (which are characters in the story) are scared of being tackled, and they run away to the gymnasium to pump weights to bulk up to protect themselves. When the students realize the suffixes are missing, they create posters to put around the school to find the suffixes. The suffixes see the posters and feel happy to be wanted so they go back to the classroom, leave clues for the students to find and then hide in a student's desk until they are found and the students learn the value of suffixes by the end of the day.


I thought the idea of this book was great; an entire book to teach about suffixes. However, I found the story rather disturbing, and thought that the macabre element to the story was only furthered by the illustrations. First, the suffixes become convinced that the students want to hurt them. This prompts the comment from the -ing suffix, "we should get in shape for tackling them back."After the gymnasium, they feel brave and head back to the classroom for a fight with the students before they see the posters the children have put up. It is only then that the suffixes decide to return to the classroom peacefully. The children in the book are portrayed as fussy, bad-mannered delinquents for the first half of the book. And their teacher, described as "exasperated," decides to skip read-aloud and deal straight with word endings, so that the students, who are already reluctant to learn about suffixes, are punished by skipping right ahead past the reading which they really seemed to be enjoying. This aspect of punishment by word endings lesson astounds me in a book that is supposed to encourage children to learn about suffixes.


The illustrations are fitting for the text, but as such they are equally disturbing. The teacher seldom looks happy and each person and even some letters have very defined teeth which make smiles look less than friendly. For words such as joking and suffocating, the "e" has been drawn to the side with dotted lines connecting the letter to where it belongs at the end of the root word. But on suffocating, the "e" that is drawn almost appears to be hanged,  due to the eyes and the direction of the line.


However, there are some interesting illustrative aspects. For example, there is an well-drawn change of perspective. On one page there is a close-up of the suffixes on a black background (most of the drawings are on a colored background), but the next page pans out and it becomes apparent that the background wasn't simply black, but  a blackboard.  Additionally, the posters seeking the suffixes are quite fun. They show blank lines where the suffixes should be in the words. For example, one poster reads: "Want__:  The bad guy_ who kidnapp_our word end____ aka suffix__." The clues written by the suffixes were equally fun. The suffixes were tired of being last and they used the clues as their chance to be first. Therefore, one clue reads, "Try ingclean out your sdesk!"


Another element of this book is the interaction between the story text and the illustrations. The people and suffixes both communicate through speech bubbles, and often the printed text will stop with an incomplete thought and the story will continue in these illustrated bubbles. For both the illustrated and the printed words, the suffixes all appear in a different color, making one take notice of each occurrence of suffixes. This actually is pretty cool because it becomes apparent just how often we use suffixes every day.


There was one part of the book I found rather cute. The final page does have one fun joke, though. The students' teacher for next year is Mrs. Edinger and the suffixes -ed, -ing, and -er point at her and say "Look! She is us!" The text by the new teacher reads "Every ending leads to a new beginning!" On the next page there are some rules and hints for adding suffixes to words and understanding what they mean.


Personally, this is not my favorite book, but one of my main reactions was that a suffix scavenger hunt, complete with mixed-up clues, would be fun for a lesson on suffixes. So in summation, I found the book helpful, but not terribly enjoyable as a story.


Test your own suffix knowledge! Here's a fun game site for the kid in everyone.