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Anastasia Suen has instituted Non Fiction Mondays on the children's literature blogs: it's the hard-working Monday to the frivolity of Poetry Friday! Join in, won't you?

Today for Non Fiction Monday I bring you a review of a book my mother read and enjoyed greatly.

This review was written by Alice Herold.

Ox, House, Stick: The History of Our Alphabet, by Don Robb, illustrated by Anne Smith

Scientists interested in the history of languages have traced our alphabet back about 4, 000 years. Ox, House, Stick tells the origin of some of the letters. I was surprised that A was named for an ox in the early Sinaitic alphabet. Turn it upside down and it shows the horns of an ox. Anne Smith contributes helpful pictures on the sides of each page of Ox, House, Stick showing what the letter looked like in Sinaitic, Phoenician, Early Greek, Classical Greek, and Roman Latin.

Robb explains that scientists are fairly certain that our D began as the Phoenician letter daleth meaning door. M in its original Sinaitic form means water. O, P, R, and S came from words for part of the head.

I found it interesting that Greeks wrote in both directions--called "boustrophedon"--which means "as the ox plows," turning at the end of the row to go back the other way.

The Romans became tired of reading words without spaces between them so they began to put a dot between sentences. The dot later became the punctuation mark we call a period.

Ox, House, Stick is an educational, fascinating book especially since I read it one day after visiting the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. Robb includes lists of websites and additional resources at the end of the book.

Are you a children’s author who would like to learn more about how you can offer school visits to promote your books and connect with young readers in your community and across the country?

Then, School Visits 101 Workshopfrom children’s author Anastasia Suen is for you.

This 5 day email course is for children’s authors and illustrators who want to learn how to prepare for a school visit. For your homework in this workshop, you will plan out your school visit talk minute-by-minute, decide on your school visit prices for the coming school year, create a mailing list of local schools, write the text for your postcard or brochure mailer, and create a system for your school visit book signings.

To read the syllabus, find out about cost, class size, and homework for this workshop series, visit School Visits 101 Workshops.

Come September, you’ll be ready to hit the schools with a dynamic presentation!

Shortly, after posting about my new project, I received this wonderful e-mail. It reminded me why creating children's books is the best job ever. And it makes me want to paint Ling and Ting in striped sailor dresses.

Dear Ms. Grace Lin,

Our names are Jennifer MeiDe and Rebekah MeiRui. We are ten years old and we are home schooled. We were born in Hefei China, but now we live in the United States. We are identical twins.

We have several books by you. The first book our Mom and Dad bought was Dim Sum For Everyone! The book we liked the most is The Year Of The Dog. Both of us can't wait to get The Year Of The Rat because our Dad and we were all born in that year.

We like your books and know that your new book will be Ling and Ting. This new book is about Chinese American twins, just like us. We look the same, but we have many differences. Jennifer loves to draw paper dolls of people. Rebekah loves to draw animals and draw background scenes.

We each write stories, but we write different kinds of stories. We are taking an online writing course at Northwestern University. Both of us like origami, just like in your other book, Lissy’s Friends , but we each make different kinds of origami figures. When we were babies, Rebekah wore a red ribbon and Jennifer wore a yellow ribbon so that they could tell us apart. Both of us still like those different colors as our favorites today.

We do the same things, but we do them in different ways. If you have any questions about Chinese American twins, please e-mail us.

Becky
and
Jenny