Alfie and other quirky little figures represent the contestants in the punctuation-mark talent show: periods and hyphens, commas, asterisks, and parentheses. They all do their things, including telling jokes and riddles (question marks) and cheerleading (exclamation points). Alfie, who has butterflies about performing onstage, does magic tricks, turning two words into contractions and demonstrating the use of the possessive. He brings down the house and is declared the show's shining star. Fanciful cartoon drawings capture the whimsy of this original, instructional story. However, children may miss some of the laughs, and, indeed, the point of the grammar lesson, if they haven't already been introduced to punctuation marks.–Sally R. Dow, Ossining Public Library, NY Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.