Tales From a Wordsmith


Book Description

Tales From a Wordsmith is a collection of seven short stories that will take you to a new fantasy realm. Reminisce with Matilda and The Wordsmith as they tell cautionary tales and relive their adventures doing what they do best, telling stories. Travel to an island always buzzing with activity or meet the Queen who bargained with The Fates. In this small collection you will be provoked and each story will leave you feeling something different. Delve into these pages and be a part of the travels, the conflicts and the creatures as told by The Wordsmith and Matilda.




The Wordsmith's Tale


Book Description

Written with great verve and wit, and bringing to the page the sights, smells and sounds of a tumultuous, often brutal period in English history, this is a timeless tale - still relevant, a thousand years on - of how love, laughter and language are the best defences, when hardship and oppression bear down on you.




My Epic Life - Daily Word Workout


Book Description

With 180 pages of hilarious illustrations, brain teasers, life inspiration, math, technology and much, much more, Daily Word Workout builds kids' vocabulary while introducing them to concepts that extend way beyond language. Make every day epic with a daily word workout that will prepare kids for anything that the world can throw at them! With 180 pages of hilarious illustrations, brain teasers, life inspiration, and much, much more, Daily Word Workout builds kids' vocabulary while introducing them to concepts that extend way beyond language. From basic mathematics to science and technology via valuable life lessons about inclusivity, tolerance, and respect, this indispensable daily wonder is designed to introduce young minds to big ideas at the breakfast table. And all through the magic of words! Why walk when you can stroll, saunter, or swagger? Don't cry when you can weep, wail, or whimper! Daily Word Workout is packed with synonyms, antonyms, and mind-blowing vocabulary that shows kids the epic scope and flexibility of language. Whether it's labelling emotions, communicating clearly, building character, or telling tall tales, there's a word here for everything. Plus, count in twos with some cookie-crazed tiger cubs! Start telling time with a tooth-brushing dog! Shapes, sizes, left and right - whatever kids need to know, our colourful cast of word-hungry animals have it covered. They'll laugh. They'll learn. Epic just became a way of life.




The List


Book Description

Fahrenheit 451 meets The Giver in an award winning dystopian story about the dangers of censorship and how far we will go in the pursuit of freedom. What if you were only allowed to speak 500 words? The city of Ark is the last safe place on Earth: the polar ice caps have melted and flooded everything, leaving few survivors. To make sure humans do not make the same mistakes, Ark's leader John Noa decrees everyone in Ark must speak List, a language of only 500 words. Language is to blame for mankind's destruction, John Noa says, as politicians and governments hid the disastrous effects of global warming and environmental damage until it was too late. Everyone must speak List ... except Letta. As apprentice to the Wordsmith, Letta can read all the words that have ever existed. Forbidden words like freedom, music, and even pineapple tell her about a world she's never known. One day her master disappears. John Noa tells Letta she is the new Wordsmith, and must shorten List to fewer and fewer words. Then Letta meets a teenage boy who somehow knows all the words that have been banned. Letta's faced with a dangerous choice: sit idly by and watch language slowly slip away or follow a stranger on a path to freedom . . . or banishment. Letta chooses to fight for the very thing that keeps us human: language itself. The List: The perfect tool to discuss censorship and freedom of speech with young readers A gripping, fast-moving story that will appeal to 5th grade readers and above, especially 10 year old girls that will love the strong character of Letta A discussion starter on the importance of language and the power of expression, and what it means for society A 2018 Notable Children's Books Selection A 2018-19 Maine Student Book Award Winner A 2018 Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year (Ages 12-14) A Junior Library Guild Selection




Wordsmiths and Warriors


Book Description

Wordsmiths and Warriors explores the heritage of English through the places in Britain that shaped it. It unites the warriors, whose invasions transformed the language, with the poets, scholars, reformers, and others who helped create its character. The book relates a real journey. David and Hilary Crystal drove thousands of miles to produce this fascinating combination of English-language history and travelogue, from locations in south-east Kent to the Scottish lowlands, and from south-west Wales to the East Anglian coast. David provides the descriptions and linguistic associations, Hilary the full-colour photographs. They include a guide for anyone wanting to follow in their footsteps but arrange the book to reflect the chronology of the language. This starts with the Anglo-Saxon arrivals in Kent and in the places that show the earliest evidence of English. It ends in London with the latest apps for grammar. In between are intimate encounters with the places associated with such writers as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth; the biblical Wycliffe and Tyndale; the dictionary compilers Cawdrey, Johnson, and Murray; dialect writers, elocutionists, and grammarians, and a host of other personalities. Among the book's many joys are the diverse places that allow warriors such as Byrhtnoth and King Alfred to share pages with wordsmiths like Robert Burns and Tim Bobbin, and the unexpected discoveries that enliven every stage of the authors' epic journey.




Storyteller's Word a Day


Book Description

Every day, flip the page and discover a new, hilariously illustrated word that will take your child's storytelling to the next level. Storyteller's Word a Day is packed with discerning data and insight on how to get the most out of every word. Set it on the breakfast table, talk about it together, tell stories, and create a daily word-learning habit that will take kids' storytelling to another planet. Hardcover with spiral binding for easy viewing by kids and parents.




Not Quite What I Was Planning


Book Description

Deceptively simple and surprisingly addictive, Not Quite What I Was Planning is a thousand glimpses of humanity—six words at a time. One Life. Six Words. What's Yours? When Hemingway famously wrote, "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving. From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead"), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-sized pieces. From authors Jonathan Lethem and Richard Ford to comedians Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris, to ordinary folks around the world, everyone has a six-word story to tell.




Worser


Book Description

A bullied 12-year-old boy must find a new normal after his mother has a stroke and his life is turned upside down. William Wyatt Orser, a socially awkward middle schooler, is a wordsmith who, much to his annoyance, acquired the ironically ungrammatical nickname of “Worser" so long ago that few people at school know to call him anything else. Worser grew up with his mom, a professor of rhetoric and an introvert just like him, in a comfortable routine that involved reading aloud in the evenings, criticizing the grammar of others, ignoring the shabby mess of their house, and suffering the bare minimum of social interactions with others. But recently all that has changed. His mom had a stroke that left her nonverbal, and his Aunt Iris has moved in with her cats, art projects, loud music, and even louder clothes. Home for Worser is no longer a refuge from the unsympathetic world at school that it has been all his life. Feeling lost, lonely, and overwhelmed, Worser searches for a new sanctuary and ends up finding the Literary Club--a group of kids from school who share his love of words and meet in a used bookstore– something he never dreamed existed outside of his home. Even more surprising to Worser is that the key to making friends is sharing the thing he holds dearest: his Masterwork, the epic word notebook that he has been adding entries to for years. But relationships can be precarious, and it is up to Worser to turn the page in his own story to make something that endures so that he is no longer seen as Worser and earns a new nickname, Worder. A New York Times Best Children's Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A Booklist Editors’ Choice Selection




Tales From the Word Guy


Book Description

Tales from the Word Guy is a collection of essays adapted from the author’s segments on CBC Radio One’s North by Northwest. Jonathan Berkowitz takes the reader on a delightful journey through the history, idiosyncrasies, and sheer pleasures of the English language. He covers how English evolved and expanded over the centuries. And he reminds us of long-forgotten aspects of how to use the language properly. You will chuckle at how it is used improperly, often with amusing results. With enthusiasm, humour, and plenty of infectious fun, Berkowitz offers up a deep appreciation for the beauty of our language. If you love our language, you’ll love this look at it.




Runt the Brave


Book Description

JaRed, a small mouse who has been given the nickname Runt, cannot believe the course his life takes when he discovers rats are planning to invade Tira-Nor and that he has been chosen by God to save the city and become the next king.