This book is awesome! (hyperbole) I love great book, a grook (portmanteau). ( )

A book for children about the history and quirks of the English language. I’ve been reading another book about the development of the English as a language, so those parts in The Word Spy mostly just summarised what I already knew - but I am not the book’s intended audience.

And I was thoroughly entertained by the rest of the book. It’s full of interesting details about language and history, clever word play and amusing illustrations. There were things I didn’t know, like the origin of the word apostrophe, or had misremembered, like the origin of Mrs Malaprop, or didn’t know the name for, like tautologies. I knew about anagrams, but hadn’t heard of lipograms (not using words with a certain letter) or pangrams (using all the letters of the alphabet). I hadn’t seen the Monty Python sketch about the ex-parrot recommended in the section about euphemisms.

This is published in the US as The Word Snoop, which seems like a strange title change. (What’s wrong with the word ‘spy’?)

I suppose in the end, language, like history, is made by human beings. And human beings are so hopelessly different and disorganised, they can never quite agree on anything. They’re only humans, after all. (Sigh.)
Still, maybe there’s something special about having these crazy plurals and even crazier spellings. I sometimes think English is like a big old wall that people have been scribbling on for centuries. ( )

10 year-old me would have rated this 5 stars, and at age 15, perhaps 4*s. By now I've seen so much of what's shared here, and am so inured to the hyper jollity of sentences such as All you have to do is open this book, take a deep breath, and dive inside," that I cannot say I enjoyed it anymore than 3 stars' worth.

The description definitely exaggerates. There is a lot more to learn about language and word-play and grammar and phonetics and linguistics, etc. etc., than could ever be covered in 246 small and openly-designed pages.

That all being said, if you know a young reader who is beginning to learn how much fun words can be, this is a great place to start, and worth buying (rather than just borrowing from the library). The author made the puzzles just difficult enough to be challenging, but not so difficult one wants to flip to the back to see the answers. And the answers aren't even always given directly, either.

We saw nothing Aussie-centric. But something may have been lost in the US edition, as I have only 246 pp. But don't worry about it. Good book for any English reader, especially the young & light-hearted.

" ( )

Dubosarsky's love of the English language and her ability to reach children comes through very well in this book. More guidebook than textbook, this fun and conversational little book will introduce many lovers of language to all the many sides of what makes language fun, from formation of alphabets to the use of codes to the linguistic reboot that technology is responsible for. The book includes the history of the English language and much of the quirky and amusing things that can be done with the language, like anagrams, palindromes, puns, and even spoonerisms. More importantly, it explains what they are, where they came from, and what some examples can be found. The illustrations and inserts aren't prominent or overwhelming (which is good in a book of its size: small but thick) and the author has even used a code to end each chapter which helps the reader to digest what that chapter contained; this code then reveals a message for the budding linguist to encourage continued use of what is learned. ( )

Dubosatsky loves word play. And that's what she takes on in this little book for children. It's a fun romp. ( )