It’s time for another article highlighting an author, and this time the choice is Val Tobin. A multi-genre author, Val has written books ranging from supernatural thrillers, paranormal romance, romantic suspense to mystery and suspense, and even horror. I have chosen the title of one of her award-winning books, Injury, for today’s word exploration. Injury It’s interesting to think about what ‘injury’ actually means. We think of it as hurt or damage, perhaps to a person; an injury playing sport, a serious head injury following a car accident, and so forth. But of course, it also has a legal s ..read more

In today’s blog, we are highlighting a wonderful children’s author, whose name and work reflect the word we are looking at. Sylva Fae writes for young children, and there are many examples of fairy, or indeed faerie, folk in her latest book, Elfabet. Fairy   Here is an interesting word, a nice example of how perceptions can change. These days, we may think of fairies and our minds go to fairytales, to cute little creatures with wings and wands, the stuff of children’s films and stories, such as in Sylva Fae’s books. But this has not always been the case, and fairies have also been viewed as t ..read more

Continuing to feature the etymology of book titles: this article is in association with Mom’s Favorite Reads. Mom’s Favorite Reads is an international community of readers and authors. Check out their web page above! Today’s author spotlight is on: Sylva Fae. What a marvellous image is conjured by this word: rainbow. We think of colour and light, and it is a cheerful thought, despite the rain. Given the miserable weather on the island where English arose, it comes as no suprise that this word has been in the language for a very long time. Let’s take a look at its passage through the centurie ..read more

A new feature on the blog: this article is in association with Mom’s Favorite Reads. Mom’s Favorite Reads is an international community of readers and authors. Check out their web page above! Today’s author spotlight is on: Hannah Howe Saving Grace I expect you have all heard this expression at one time or another; it means “the thing that in some way mitigates all the negative points”. But where does it come from? It’s actually quite simple to get to the origin of this phrase. But we like things to be a little more challenging. So, we are going to go first to the etymology of the word ‘grace ..read more

For my second review for Multicultural Book Day, I have a book by Greek author Alkistis Halikia. The Color of Myth Text by Alkistis Halikia and illustrations by Nikoletta Halikia This is a colouring book for children to discover more about ancient Greek mythology. The bulk of the book consists of beautiful illustrations, necessarily drawn in line form so that the children may colour them in. They reflect the style generally found on ancient Greek pottery, and the subject matter is taken from mythology. The drawings are very tastefully done, with each image appearing twice: once against a blac ..read more

This year, I am delighted to announce that I am taking part in Multicultural Children’s Book Day, which is celebrated each year in a bid to raise awareness of books that celebrate diversity, and which aims to get such books into the hands of both young readers and teachers. As part of this, it has been my pleasure to review books by Greek authors. I have never made any secret of my support of multilingualism, and I believe that teachers could support multilingual children by encouraging them to read in their minority language. For those that have Greek-speaking children in their classrooms, he ..read more

In recent years, with the popularity of science fiction books and films, this word has been used more and more in the context of “extra-terrestrial, being from another planet”. In British English, it is used only extremely rarely to mean ‘foreigner’, and there are references to this in popular culture at the expense of US English, where it continues to have this meaning; such as in the song by Sting Englishman in New York, where he sings “I’m an alien, I’m an Englishman in New York” precisely because it sounds strange to the British listener. It is interesting that it should sound strange, as ..read more

Here is a word that applies to all of us without exception. No matter where or how, we have all been born: we have all had a birth. So where does the word come from? Is it a Latin root, through French, perhaps. Well, no, in French it is naissance. Is it from Greek? In Greek, birth is γεννα [genna] or τοκετός [toketos]. So we will have to look elsewhere. Let’s start by going back to Middle English. Here we may find various spellings, including bird, burd, burth, borth and byrd as well as the much more familiar birth. We have a nice example in On the Properties of Things, John Trevisa’s tran ..read more

Never one to pass up on the opportunity to talk about language, I was only too happy to accede to the request of one of my readers and write about ‘tongue’. This word has a double meaning as the organ in the mouth and also ‘language’. Most apt for the purposes of this blog, I feel. On seeing the spelling of the word, with the -gue ending, you may be forgiven for wondering if it derives from French, as this continues to be a common ending in that language. But spelling, as we have seen before, may be deceptive, and it seems that in this case the spelling does not reveal the origin. Indeed, in ..read more

Do you view school as a place of enjoyment? Is it the first place that pops into mind when you hear the word ‘fun’? This might seem like a strange question, but all will quickly become clear. The word we use today to mean ‘place of learning/ teaching’ developed from a word in Old English, in which the word was scól. You may notice that the spelling is considerably different – they felt no need to put an H after the C. So why do we do that today, since the pronunciation would be the same without it? The answer is that during the Renaissance, which was from the 14th to the 17th centuries, classi ..read more