The unknown history of letters For as long as any letter could remember, Vowels and Consonants had been enemies. U without N? Q without U? Mpssh! you say. Yet once, long ago, P's and Q's minded their p's and q's, and though U and I deserved not one iota of respect. For their part, Vowels knew only that the dot on the youngest i was far moe important than the most capital W. And so they came to wage a fierce war to prove who were the better letters. But as S's outflank E's and O's surround H's, an enemy of all the alphabet appers on the horizon--one which neither Vowels or Consonants can conquer alone. In this hilarious look at the hidden life of letters, Priscilla and Whitney Turner reveal how sworn enemies become allies and discovered what you and I now take for granted: that the pen is mightier than the swrd.

In an engrossing historical novel, the Newbery Medal-winning author of Bridge to Terebithia follows a young Cuban teenager as she volunteers for Fidel Castro’s national literacy campaign and travels into the impoverished countryside to teach others how to read. When thirteen-year-old Lora tells her parents that she wants to join Premier Castro’s army of young literacy teachers, her mother screeches to high heaven, and her father roars like a lion. Nora has barely been outside of Havana — why would she throw away her life in a remote shack with no electricity, sleeping on a hammock in somebody’s kitchen? But Nora is stubborn: didn’t her parents teach her to share what she has with someone in need? Surprisingly, Nora’s abuela takes her side, even as she makes Nora promise to come home if things get too hard. But how will Nora know for sure when that time has come? Shining light on a little-known moment in history, Katherine Paterson traces a young teen’s coming-of-age journey from a sheltered life to a singular mission: teaching fellow Cubans of all ages to read and write, while helping with the work of their daily lives and sharing the dangers posed by counterrevolutionaries hiding in the hills nearby. Inspired by true accounts, the novel includes an author’s note and a timeline of Cuban history.

This book will tell all you need to know about British English spelling. It's a reference work intended for anyone interested in the English language, especially those who teach it, whatever the age or mother tongue of their students. It will be particularly useful to those wishing to produce well-designed materials for teaching initial literacy via phonics, for teaching English as a foreign or second language, and for teacher training. English spelling is notoriously complicated and difficult to learn; it is correctly described as much less regular and predictable than any other alphabetic orthography. However, there is more regularity in the English spelling system than is generally appreciated. This book provides, for the first time, a thorough account of the whole complex system. It does so by describing how phonemes relate to graphemes and vice versa. It enables searches for particular words, so that one can easily find, not the meanings or pronunciations of words, but the other words with which those with unusual phoneme-grapheme/grapheme-phoneme correspondences keep company. Other unique features of this book include teacher-friendly lists of correspondences and various regularities not described by previous authorities, for example the strong tendency for the letter-name vowel phonemes (the names of the letters ) to be spelt with those single letters in non-final syllables.

On the island of Alphabeterra, there are no words. The consonants are separated from the vowels by the Forest of Empty Pages. It is so vast and imposing that the letters are afraid to explore it. One day a brave "s" named Stella and an intrepid "u" named Upton decide to make their way through the forest-one from the west, the other from the east. Their journeys lead them to a discovery that can only be described as Awesome. This lighthearted adventure blends humor with a bit of education, a lot of colorful imagery and a reminder of what one can gain with courage and friendship.

Accompanying CD contains ... "[all] the sounds described in this book."--Page 4 of cover.

We all know the basics of punctuation. Or do we? A look at most neighborhood signage tells a different story. Through sloppy usage and low standards on the internet, in email, and now text messages, we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with.

As the colonial hegemony of empire fades around the world, the role of language in ethnic conflict has become increasingly topical, as have issues concerning the right of speakers to choose and use their preferred language(s). Such rights are often asserted and defended in response to their being violated. The importance of understanding these events and issues, and their relationship to individual, ethnic, and national identity, is central to research and debate in a range of fields outside of, as well as within, linguistics. This book provides a clearly written introduction for linguists and non-specialists alike, presenting basic facts about the role of language in the formation of identity and the preservation of culture. It articulates and explores categories of conflict and language rights abuses through detailed presentation of illustrative case studies, and distills from these key cross-linguistic and cross-cultural generalizations.

“A book for our times.” (Indian Express) “Majoritarianism gets a fresh, new spin through this thought-provoking book!” (Shobhaa De) “Deserves a read.” (Times of India) “Roy goes where few others would dare to tread.” (Rajdeep Sardesai) “Read it if you love the English language.” (Money Control) “This cerebral work of fiction draws from the little known etymological facts about the English alphabet.” (Outlook) “An ingenious narrative.” (The Statesman) “Built on a strong foundation.” (The Week) “That rare kind of book.” (Sunday Mid-Day) “It has a universal appeal for the family and the world at large.” (Shekhar Kapur) “A must-read for those concerned with the present and future of humankind.” (Business India) ALPHABETICA is an allegorical satire set up in the fantasy world of "Planet Typewriter". This land of "unity-in-diversity" is divided when the twenty-one Consonants discover that they are the original 3500-year-old Phoenician letters. The five Vowels, who came much later, are declared Greek intruders. When the Vowels emerge as the dominant word shareholders in the dictionary, the Consonant Majority retaliates with the "Rise of the Phoenicians" campaign. The Vowels are forced to seek asylum in the land of the Numbers. With the world of words silenced, the Typewriter God abandons the Consonants. Will the Punctuations and Signs tilt the balance to prevent the war of wor(l)ds?

"A new book by Don Mee Choi that includes poems, prose, and images" --