Profiles twenty-six authors with original and distinctive approaches to literature and language, from a man who used vanity license plates to tell stories and a woman who made new poems by subtracting letters from published works to people who studied word origins and variations.
The Newbery Medal-winning author of Joyful Noise and the Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator of The Right Word present alphabetized portraits of 26 extraordinary writers, from Jean-Dominique Bauby, who dictated his memoir by blinking his eye, to Frederic Cassidy, who amassed 176 words for dust bunnies. Simultaneous eBook. Illustrations.
Are you a word person? A curiosity seeker? An explorer? Take a look at these twenty-six extraordinary individuals for whom love of language is an extreme sport.
Step right up and read the genuine stories of writers so intoxicated by the shapes and sound of language that they collected, dissected, and constructed verbal wonders of the most extraordinary kind. Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote his memoirs by blinking his left eyelid, unable to move the rest of his body. Frederic Cassidy was obsessed with the language of place, and after posing hundreds of questions to folks all over the United States, amassed (among other things) 176 words for dust bunnies. Georges Perec wrote a novel without using the letter e (so well that at least one reviewer didn&;t notice its absence), then followed with a novella in which e was the only vowel. A love letter to all those who love words, language, writing, writers, and stories, Alphamaniacs is a stunningly illustrated collection of mini-biographies about the most daring and peculiar of writers and their audacious, courageous, temerarious way with words.
