Apr 03 2009
Book Review - “Ox, House, Stick: The History of Our Alphabet” by Don Robb
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Note: The following is part of my intermittent Fun Friday series where I write reviews of children’s books.
I love children’s books because they take incredibly complicated subjects and distill them down into bite size pieces that you can understand and learn from without having to have a Masters degree in the subject.
Ox, House, Stick: The History of our Alphabet by Don Robb is just such a children’s book. It is about how our alphabet came into being, something I was discussing with someone just the other day. Why, I wondered, is our alphabet in the order it is in? Why doesn’t our alphabet read as A, C, Y, W, F, Z…
You get the picture.
According to Ox, House, Stick page 19:
No one knows why the letters of the alphabet appear in the order they do. They’ve kept pretty much the same order since Phoenician times.
Well, at least I’m not the only one who doesn’t know the answer to that question. 
I thoroughly enjoyed this book because it took a fairly complicated subject (the history of written language) and broke it down into understandable and interesting chunks. I enjoyed looking at all of the colorful and well-drawn illustrations scattered throughout the book too.
The picture below is actually the back cover for the book, and shows the first two letters of the alphabet (A and B) in a variety of languages: Hebrew, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian. It’s interesting to see the similarities and differences between the alphabets.
Does it make me a real geek that I think lists like that are interesting?
Don’t answer that.
This would be a great book for a teacher in a classroom (geared for ages 8 - 12), a homeschooling mom, or just someone like me who loves to learn about a variety of subjects without having to invest months or years of my time to learning every nook and cranny.
I give Ox, House, Stick: The History of Our Alphabet 4.75 out of 5 stars.
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