Bippity Bop Barbershop

Bippity Bop Barbershop

Written by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley

Illustrated by E. B. Lewis

Published by Little, Brown and Company, 2002

29 Pages
Fiction

     Bippity Bob Barbershop is a cute story about a boy's first hair cut. The boy is first awoken by a secret knock "Bibbity-be-bop-bop! Bippity-be-bop-bop"; it's his father who has come to take him to his first hair cut. The father and son dress up by matching each other. They go to a shop to get breakfast and the father tells the man at the store that it's the boy's first hair cut. Mr. J., the man at the store, gives the boy a double chocolate milk and proclaims, "this calls for a celebration...".

     The barbershop is a place for male bonding. When the boy is noticing the different types of hair cuts at the barbershop, this would be a good time to work on adjectives and correlating them to the illustrations. The boy becomes scared when it becomes his time for his hair cut, but his father sits next to him and tells him a trick about overcoming fear and being brave.

     The illustrations by E.B. Lewis are painted to look realistic and makes use of various perspectives. Every illustration makes it look like you're following this child through the experience of his first hair cut. An important illustration is the electric clippers that stands alone on a white page; this is later pertinent to story when it's the boy's turn for his hair cut, those very clippers are the ones that cause the boy to cover his head in fear.

     This story would be appropriate for students ages 4 and up. I could see this story mostly being appropriate in a kindergarten to first grade classroom. You could use this in a lesson focusing on overcoming fear and covering adjectives.