By: Sienna Whitmore
There is something refreshing about a children’s book written by someone who does not come from a children’s publishing background, who brings to the project the specific enthusiasm of a person who decided to make something because they wanted to make it rather than because it was their professional territory. Keith A. Leitner is a faculty member at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, and the children’s book he co-authored with his wife about homophones represents a creative departure that he clearly enjoyed making enormously. That enjoyment is present throughout The Unknown Gnome from Nome in the specific way that genuine enthusiasm communicates itself through a text, giving the wordplay a liveliness and a warmth that more formulaic educational children’s books rarely achieve.
Homophones are among the most fertile sources of genuine comedy in the English language, and the Leitners have built their book around that comedic potential with a central premise that is genuinely inspired. A gnome from Nome, Alaska, whose name nobody knows, is the perfect protagonist for a story about words that sound the same but mean different things, because the character himself is a living example of the phenomenon, his gnome-ness rhyming with his home, his unnamed status making the know-no distinction both personal and playful.
The approach they have taken to vocabulary education reflects a genuine understanding of how children actually learn language, which is through encounter and repetition and the specific pleasure of recognizing a pattern rather than through the explicit memorization of rules. Each homophone pair the book introduces arrives in a narrative context that makes the distinction between the two words feel like a discovery rather than a lesson, which is the difference between vocabulary instruction that sticks and vocabulary instruction that evaporates the moment the test is over.
The book is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books-A-Million, as well as through the authors’ own website at leitnerpublishing.com, reflecting the genuine investment the Leitners have made in getting this book into the hands of the young readers who will enjoy it most. The trailer they created for it captures the charm and the humor of the book itself, and the enthusiasm of the academic turned children’s author is entirely winning throughout.
If you are looking for a children’s book about homophones that earns its educational credentials through genuine humor and genuine storytelling rather than through earnest instruction, The Unknown Gnome from Nome by Keith A. Leitner is the book that makes vocabulary learning genuinely fun. Head over to Amazon today and get your copy for every young reader in your life who is ready to discover the funniest things about the English language.
