My 'Xyz' Sound Box

Jane Belk Moncure's Sound Box Books

by Jane Belk Moncure

Three characters find words beginning with the letter "x," "y," and "z" to put in their sound boxes.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

30 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Jane Belk Moncure (born December 1926) is an American author of early childhood non-fiction, fiction and poetry. She has also written under the names Bruce Wannamaker and Jennie Davis.

Moncure has lived in Virginia and North Carolina. She worked in early childhood education for thirty-five years. She lives in Elon College, North Carolina.

Moncure is a creative and prolific author: there are millions of her books in circulation, and they are widely distributed in schools and libraries. Distribution has been primarily through The ChildsWorld, ChildrensPress and Scholastic. Her creations and works include My First Steps to Reading, My First Steps to Math, My First Steps to Science, Word Bird, The Soundbox Books, and The Magic Castle Series. Her works have been translated into British English, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Malay. Belk Library, Elon University holds a collection of all published books by Moncure.

Jane Belk Moncure is a recipient of the C.S. Lewis Award and over the past 20 years, her works were recognized by numerous Awards. Most recently, in 2008, Jane received the Scholastic Teacher's Choice Award for her outstanding contribution to the My First Steps to Learning Program. --from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this series of books. Each one provides several words that contain the 'sound of the book' in the story. The story also contains images over key words (i.e. Little X, box, x-ray machine) to help familiarize the reader with new or important words. During the story there is also repetition of the words.

At the end of the book there are lists of the words from the book and other words that start with the same letter as well as an activity to do together as a family.

My son enjoys this series of books and we will probably be checking them all out of our library.

[Edward Sojuwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This picture book by Jane Moncure teaches young tots the final three of our alphabet: X Y and Z. The X kid has a sound box made of cardboard, and his job is to find things that start with X and stick it in there. He finds an X-ray machine, but the machine is not, um, Xactly the right size for his Xbox. So he puts in X-ray photos of his hands and feet instead. Xtraordinary! The Y kid has a Y box for Y things, and the Youngster only finds a Yoyo and an attached Yarn. You can hear him Yip all the way to Yonkers! The Z kid wants to put three Zebras into her Zbox, but zebras are too smart having been in the Zoo too long and they Zip like Zingers outside until Z girl gets them to Zoom back to their Zip code. Ms Moncure polishes off the alphabet in style for kids 3 to 6.
3 stars
Making it easy as X Y Z!

[Kayla]

I like how the book combined the last 3 letter of the alphabet. Not really enough things a child could just randomly find that start with those letters. It's a book to read aloud with pre-k kids and you can ask them what is that a picture of and then they can see what the text spells after they look at the picture

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one came perilously close to being abandoned. The X part was just too long and repetitive and Mini-Me was trying to close the book. Then we came across Little Y and his yo-yo and Little Z and her zebras. She liked those enough to ask for another reading.

[Trisan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I found these when I started letter of the week. My munchkin really enjoyed reading along.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Used in Storytime 1/26/17 - XYZ

[Miss Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The kids representing letters x, y and z are collecting items that begin with their letters. Preschool and up

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked that x, y, and z were combined because we are focusing on all of those letters soon in our homeschool program. X-ray, yo-yo, and zebra are the main objects that go in the sound boxes.

[Little Champs]

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