A History of Words for Children

By Mary Richards and Rose Blake

  • is a writer, publisher and musician from London.

  • is an illustrator and artist from the UK.

  • in 2022 by Thames & Hudson Ltd, London.

  • 7+

Here is one more brilliant encyclopedias by Thames&Hudson. I have already posted about A History of Music for Children. This one is very similar.

This book develops from the beginning of the language into it’s most flourishing days and into the future. Along the way, it tells us about how the word began, what makes us humans and what’s the difference between a man and a talking parrot.

Step by step it goes from how it evolved, what caused the change and how this change made us different from the animals.

There’s another lovely encyclopedia by DK called The History of Information. In my History of Language lessons I combine them. Because basically we are who we are because we can store information and the language and its forms help us to do it.

You can find the information about writing and reading words, learning how to communicate for visually impaired people. Mary Richards tells us about powerful words and the ones in pictures, about secret and poetic words. And so much more.

Just as other encyclopedias by Thames&Hudson, it’s not boring although very informative. You hear the word ‘history’ and think of dates and times, dull stuff and timelines. But here we can see that in this book the words we speak about come alive and transport you into different periods.