​​​With wit and passion, Paquita explains the reasons why English spelling is the way it is. Even though I know a lot about spelling and the history behind it, this book was full of revelations. I was especially interested in “Chapter One – A Class Plot?” This was a fantastic chapter giving the history of why we don’t have a simplified spelling system. In “Chapter 2 - Cursive Casualties” she explains how the Medieval Norman scribes’ slanting writing changed spelling for the worst. This is the key to a lot of “strange” spellings vs. pronunciation.
From Chapter 3 onwards she explains the history behind various rules, letters, silent letters and pronunciation. With titles such as: Beware Greek Gifts, The Curse of the Dagger, Yods and Imps, Where do rules come from? Why Bother? she details how spelling has changed and developed, and makes suggestions about how to teach/engage children in learning spellings through using drama, costumes, feather pens, timelines etc.
It’s a book every teacher should read so that they can answer those horrid questions about why a word is spelt the way it is without resorting to “Oh it’s just the way spelling is,” which is no use to anyone.
For future editions an index would be very useful. And maybe her book "Reading with Rules, 30,000 Words Listed with Spelling Rules, Reasons and Rebels" should be on Amazon because she mentions it quite often in the book; and it looks like there might be even more interesting facts in there that are not in this book – can’t wait to read it.