Away With Words

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What a clever book! Sophie has used a speculative idea - this book is set in a world where, when people speak, their words appear as actual, physical things - and used it to highlight a very real problem - when people can't speak, for any reason, they are often treated as lesser than the people around them, less intelligent and less able. Sophie's two characters, one silent through anxiety and one because English is her third language and she's not very fluent yet - show this wonderfully. Our Sister, Again is a vibrant exploration of love, personhood and everything in between. This is a book driven by a family’s affection, for their daughter and their sister. Quietly thought-provoking, it’ll have you questioning what it means to be human and how far someone will go for love.” Reads Rainbow blog Crucially, most of the puns aren’t even funny: tortured, convoluted, overly-reliant on obscure pop culture minutiae, and some barely even qualify as puns. Most of the competitions rely, as the competitors readily admit, on quantity rather than quality, and by half way through the climactic day-long battle even the audience is bored. And blow-by-blow descriptions of these contests takes up most of the book. Berkowitz's introduction to the Punslingers scene is a good example of his easy, generous approach to transportive detail and the gauzy metaphors that make this entire book about had-to-be-there moments possible. Set in a world where words appear physically when people speak, Away with Words explores the importance of communication and being there for those we love.

Utterly unique and movingly memorable, Away With Words is a wonderful story about what happens when we take control of our own narrative, and find ways to communicate across the gaps in language. Clever, brilliantly written, and thought-provoking, it will stay with you.” Sinéad O’Hart, author of The Time Tider It has been fantastic to read this novel. As someone who is a communication specialist and spends a lot of time helping children and young people to adapt and learn how they can better interact, this is a book that might go some way to helping the wider world understand the challenges those with selective mutism face and how we can better support them.” Eimear Monahan, Paediatric Speech and Language Therapist How wonderful is that? Ohhh I want to exist in a world where words are visible! It was enchanting. The story moves the pair into a situation where their kind hobby shines a spotlight on them both, forcing them to have to openly speak out in a way neither would normally have confidence doing.Eleven year old Gala’s dad Jordi has relocated them both from Cadaqués, Spain to Fortrose, Scotland, so that he can live with his boyfriend Ryan. Gala isn’t happy about the move as she speaks only Catalan. She feels quite lost in her new school and unable to express her feelings with words. Things begin to change the day she meets Natalie, a girl with selective mutism. With Natalie’s inability to speak in public and Gala’s inability to speak in English, the two form a strong bond based on their own special ways of communication. They even use words to write supportive poems for their classmates. But someone then begins writing poems with nasty messages. Will Gala and Natalie be able to speak up for themselves? I really enjoyed this book and loved the friendship that Gala and Natalie developed together. The friendship that Gala also formed with Eilidh O was another really good friendship that warmed my heart throughout the later chapters of the book.

In a Nutshell: A touching middle-grade work focussing on the difficulties of traversing through new places and new experiences. What makes the whole story experience special is that it is set in a world where words appear physically when people speak. Good for the target age group.But I wonder, now, how long it will be before I think about the idea of punning without returning to this weird, unsatisfying blip of 2019. Had you told me in high school that I would one day screw up the chance to date a hot, nerdy girl who puns competitively, I would have… well I probably would have just masturbated. But afterwards, I would have felt both happy to have been briefly accepted into such a person’s life, and sad that it didn’t work out. Gala and her dad, Jordi, have just moved from home in Cataluña to a town in Scotland, to live with Jordi’s boyfriend Ryan. Gala doesn’t speak much English, and feels lost, lonely and unable to be her usual funny self. Until she befriends Natalie, a girl with selective mutism. The two girls find their own ways to communicate, which includes collecting other people's discarded words. They use the words to write anonymous supportive poems for their classmates, but then someone begins leaving nasty messages using the same method – and the girls are blamed. Gala has finally started adapting to her new life in Scotland and is determined to find the culprit. Can she and Natalie show the school who they really are? Bestselling author Alexandra Christo, author of TikTok sensation To Kill a Kingdom, introduces her new book, The Night Hunt (Hot Key Books), a dark...

Our primary mission is to provide an unlimited number of sign language and CDI interpreters to the greater Pacific Northwest Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Deaf/Blind community, with personal attention and professional service that meets your highest expectations. His description of people is even better. As someone who knows what this guy looks like, his description of one punner as “thin, wolfishly handsome, like the star of every student film ever submitted in good faith to a major film festival” (75) is absolutely friggin spot-on. I read that and kind of Owen Wilsoned a squinty wayyow in assent. There’s also the couple that looks like “different eras of Rachel Maddow” and countless other breezy metaphors. Which brings me to the most significant thought I had throughout AWW: my own relationship with puns. Finishing this book (and this review, I guess) is a strange juncture in my linguistic life. I like puns enough—have always loved puns enough, I should say—that once, in 2013, I announced to my then-girlfriend that I had decided I needed to stop punning because I was starting to spend too much brainpower looking for potential puns, to literally no social benefit. ( Ohh noooo, she cooed sadly, aware that I was painfully resigning an important part of my identity.) Last summer I really enjoyed Our Sister Again. It dealt with the difficult subject of bereavement and death of a child sensitively through the magical thinking that Joan Didion uses in her great essays from A Year if Magical Thinking.

ISBN

Prolific Press (Anthology): https://prolificpress.com/bookstore/inwood-indiana-c-4/the-pop-machine-p-205.html?zenid=kuqgm0j7ps9frr7sf3k2h6j1u3 Exploring the wonder of words and language, and the magic of friendship, Sophie Cameron’s Away with Wordsis a beautiful, inclusive marvelfor 11+-year-olds. The writing is magic, too, with emotions conjured in synesthetic technicolour, for in this extraordinary story world, words take on a physical form when people speak. They fall from mouths, fly through the air, bounce off walls. And they’re collected, curated and gifted with transformative results, too.