Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story

Who knew that this book who talks about the letters of the alphabet, one at a time, would entertain and inspire me so much?

This 400 page book is divided into 26 parts, for the 26 letters of the alphabet. First, we learn the history of the letter in question, how it came to look the way it does now, how the letter is pronounced and why, and what sound it is used to represent. This section ends each time with the possible "sound-play" with each letter, which always made me smile. For example, for F :

Sound-play for ‘f’ gives us ‘fluff’, and the word my father used for ‘don’t fuss’ – ‘don’t faff’. ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum…’ has lasted several centuries. There is also a noise of disbelief doing the rounds which sounds something like ‘fwof’. Unhelpfully enough, sometimes the ‘f’ sound can also be written with a ‘ph’: when we say ‘phew’ to people we’re tired or relieved. ‘Phwoar’ – as the noise to mean, ‘You’re sexy’.

‘For better or for worse’ is a double phrase in which each half is linked by the initial ‘f’ in ‘for’.

But the best part is what comes after. The author has fun talking about the subject of his choice, related in one way or another to the alphabet, and it is always fascinating. For F, it's "F is for Font". Through these multiple sections, I learned a lot about calligraphy and how it has been taught to children over time, about fonts before computers, about the origin of the zip code and the word "OK", and I learned why our computer keyboard is organized the way it is.

The part about computer keyboards inspired me in a completely unexpected way. Michael Rosen pointed out to me that while all children learn to write on paper using a specific method in school, writing on a computer is completely absent from the school curriculum. While I write 10 times more often on a computer, I never learned how to do it properly. So I quickly searched the internet for something that would teach me how to type quickly, and I came across this great site: https://www.typingclub.com/. My boyfriend and I got hooked and spent many evenings practicing like big nerds next to each other. He finished the lessons before I did, and now he's practicing by typing a whole novel thanks to this other great site https://www.keybr.com/where in the parameters you can enter your own text to train on. Project Gutenberg provides us with an infinite source of pleasure.

I recommend this book to lovers of words and to parents of curious children who will not fail to be amazed... and who may be lucky enough to want to learn how to type well before they reach adulthood.