Don’t try to digest The Word Snoop too quickly.  You may want to linger over some of the strange euphemisms for death, like “joined the choir invisible, or “permanently out of print.”  And who knew that cuneiform means “wedge-shaped” and Hieroglyph means “holy writing?”  Kids who text may think that leaving out vowels, (like “bn” for “been”) is pretty tricky, until they learn that the original alphabet had no vowels.

Told with humor and fun, this story of the evolution of the English language explains origins, history, and uses of words, from malapropisms to rebuses, Pig Latin to plurals.

A detailed table of contents makes the book  easy to navigate, a glossary gives yet more explanations of the terms used, and keys to the puzzles are at the end of the book.  Tohby Riddle’s drawings, silhouettes, and red text boxes make this wealth of information easier to understand.  The Word Snoop would be fun to read aloud, even to very young “word snoops.”