Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for sending me a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. 

 

First off, I should clarify I have not been able to read the original version of this book yet, so I won’t be able to compare the young readers’ version to it. Hopefully someday soon a copy of Dreyer’s English will make it into my hands, but until then I can only review Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) as a standalone. 

 

Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) is a quick overview on ways to improve your writing, from punctuation and word choice to verifying quotes and general consistency. 

 

I feel the strongest part of this book is the variety of information it is able to quickly cover, and I often enjoyed the Dreyer’s humor throughout (although, since this book is geared for ages 10 and up, I’m not sure how much of that humor will be accessible for younger readers). I also appreciated that the book begins with a disclaimer: no stylebook is ever 100% correct 100% of the time and many stylebooks disagree with each other. With that in mind, Dreyer is the copy chief of Random House, so this stylebook is written with their set of rules in mind. So, Dreyer explains, with this book he has set out to 1) write about the issues he most often sees while copyediting and how he attempts to address them, and 2) not try to replicate the guidance of other stylebooks. 

 

I do have a couple of issues with this book. First, while I think the tone will be inviting to most readers, I’m not sure if the intended audience has been properly narrowed down: throughout the book the intended audience seems to alternate between middle school and high school students. For parts of the book this may not be an issue, but since there is a substantial difference between a 6th grader and a 12th grader (or even an 8th grader and an 11th grader), I think it’s something to keep in mind (especially since every teenager I’ve ever come across will immediately stop reading if they perceive a book as even beginning to talk down to them). 

 

Second, there’s an occasional lack of clarity with the examples provided and other times a noncommittal attitude towards certain topics. Although, since we’ve already learned that language is surprisingly flexible, perhaps this isn’t an issue - except that most of the other topics have defined opinions. Within my library, if my younger patrons come to me searching for a book to improve their writing, they’re generally looking for clear explanations because they are having trouble fully grasping their teacher’s explanation. Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) doesn’t really fill that need. 

 

Third, there is a general mix of descriptiveness and prescriptiveness in the suggestions offered. Of course, everyone has their personal preferences, but Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) switches between descriptive and prescriptive without differentiating between the two. For instance, at one point Dreyer argues against the use of everyone’s friend “irregardless” (prescriptive, mentioned in Chapter 7 of my ARC) and then later praises the making up of words (descriptive, mentioned in Chapter 7 of my ARC slightly after the section on “irregardless”). Both instances are on the ‘making up’ of words but have conflicting answers. [*Note: I’m not arguing either for or against the word “irregardless” but I would like to point out that this polarizing word was included in Merriam-Webster’s words of the week in July 2020 (https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-words-of-the-week-july-03-2020), and, to quote them “has been in widespread and near-constant use since 1795.”] 

 

Finally, I completely disagree with the section on capitalizing names. If someone has expressly stated a preference for lowercase to be used, to deliberately ignore that preference is akin to misspelling their name. So, it’s “bell hooks” not “Bell Hooks”. PLEASE respect that and don’t choose to capitalize names just because you think they should be. Names are an integral part to identity and have a history of being ignored and/or deliberately changed by whites. It is up to each individual to choose their identity and how it is expressed, not those around them. 

 

In all, I think Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) can be summed up as follows: the English language is complicated and doesn’t really follow a well-defined set of rules (especially since our language loves to steal things from other languages at random), so if you are having problems with convention, consensus, clarity, and/or comprehension in your writing…you might be best off just trying to rewrite it. 

 

Thank you again to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for the privilege of reviewing an ARC. 

I really enjoyed the layout and how tasks are dispersed throughout the year. I’ve found a lot of tips to add to my gardening routine and will definitely use the style of weekly checklists going forward. However, the authors live in western Massachusetts and while this book is marketed as applicable for every gardening zone, there is a 7 week difference in the recommended start date to begin planting seeds indoors from this book and my local garden shop (Territorial Seed Company, with Territorial’s date being 7 weeks later in the year). I’m not an experienced enough gardener to know if both seed starting dates work, but it’s something I plan to experiment with this upcoming gardening season. The book is also primarily focused on spring gardens, and since I live in an area that can also fall garden I wish there was a bit more information on late season gardening.

A delightful, short read intended for adults (such as parents, teachers, and librarians) to encourage the joy of reading with all the youth they encounter. After all, our job as life-long readers is to act as a guide (Pennac calls us matchmakers) to the younger generations, letting them taste different genres and writers at their own speed until they find something that clicks. Maybe that will be the first book you share with them or maybe it will be the thousandth; maybe it will be a book that is new to you or maybe it will be your childhood favorite. 

There is a lot of pressure in our education system for reading certain things a certain way in a certain amount of time, and unfortunately that method does not work for a lot of people. I can’t tell you how many people have told me how they did not become “readers” until they were well out of our education system, and that makes me quite sad.

I was, however, surprised with Pennac’s description of what constitutes a “good” book versus a “bad” book (under Right #5, beginning on page 150). Pennac, basically, claims anything in what he calls the “Bestseller Factory” is a bad book simply because “they are not about creating something new but about reproducing existing forms. Because they trade in simplification (in other words, lies), whereas the novel is the art of telling the truth (in other words, complexity). (Pages 150-151)” Perhaps Pennac’s idea of what a bestseller is from 1992 is different than mine, but I find this an extremely narrow view for a book that is supposed to celebrate the joy of reading (and, reading in your own way and reading your own things). Stories are subjective, and one person’s favorite may be someone else’s least. I’ve had several library patrons tell me that bestsellers are what got them into reading, and for many of those patrons those bestsellers are the only books they read because they find them the most enjoyable. Does the fact that a book (or an author) lands consistently on a bestseller list make it bad? I don’t think so. There are such things as poorly formatted or poorly edited books, but to me that just means those books were published before they were ready to meet readers. In fact, at the time of this review, I would only consider a few elements of what could make a book “bad”:

Perhaps my thoughts will change in the future, but at the end of the day my feelings are this: read what you want, when you want, how you want (and yes, audiobooks count as reading). As long as you’re reading (and enjoying it), isn’t that the goal?