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    Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
    Unavailable
    Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
    Unavailable
    Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
    Ebook460 pages7 hours

    Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story

    By Michael Rosen

    5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A “beguiling . . . passionate and funny” biography of the alphabet—from A to Z and umlauts to dictionaries—by a bestselling author “whose fervor is contagious” (Boston Globe).
     
    In Alphabetical, Michael Rosen tells the fascinating tale of how our modern alphabet—those twenty-six peculiar shapes and their corresponding sounds—came to be. With a chapter devoted to each letter, Rosen shares personal anecdotes and fascinating facts about the history and evolution of written language. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and the first time sounds were turned into symbols, he races on to show how nonsense poems work, pin down the strange story of OK, trace our five lost letters and tackle the tyranny of spelling, among many other things.
     
    His heroes of the alphabet range from Edward Lear to Phyllis Pearsall (the inventor of the A-Z), and from the two scribes of Beowulf to today’s most innovative rappers. Exploring subjects from codes to umlauts and the writing of dictionaries, “Rosen has written a charming and thought-provoking book about what written language represents, how we use it, and the joys and mysteries therein.” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateFeb 1, 2015
    ISBN9781619025165
    Unavailable
    Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
    Author

    Michael Rosen

    Michael Rosen is well-known as a poet and broadcaster and was Children’s Laureate from 2007-2009. He has devoted his life to entertaining children with his writing and performances and to informing teachers, librarians, parents, publishers and government agencies of the importance of supporting children’s books.

    Read more from Michael Rosen

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