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BBC Bitesize

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KS3 English learning resources for adults, children, parents and teachers organised by topic.

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Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 and died in 1616. Although his plays were written 400 years ago they are full of characters, dilemmas and stories we all still recognise. The Shakespeare Learning Zone gives you loads of information about Shakespeare's plays.

You'll find key facts, key scenes, pictures from past productions, videos of actors and directors working on and performing the plays AND find out about all the main characters and how they relate to each other.

Whether you want to know a little or a lot, this site has the information you need.

Just choose a play and enjoy!

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Shakespeare Learning Zone | Royal Shakespeare Company | Royal Shakespeare Company

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The Shakespeare Learning Zone contains loads of information about the story, setting and characters of Shakespeare's plays, with useful revision help and notes for teachers.

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Intro to Greek Myths: The Myth of Prometheus, Pandora's Box and the creation of mankind 8 Lessons

The themes of hospitality (Xenia), bravery (Aristeia) and honour (Philotimia) Baucis and Philemon; Minos and the Minotaur; Achilles 8 Lessons

Homer's Odyssey 12 Lessons

How are you feeling?

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English lessons for Year 7 students - Oak National Academy

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Intro to Greek Myths: The Myth of Prometheus, Pandora's Box and the creation of mankind 8 Lessons The themes of hospitality (Xenia), bravery (Aristeia) and honour (Philotimia) Baucis and Philemon; Minos and the Minotaur; Achilles 8 Lessons Homer's Odyssey 12 Lessons How are you feeling?

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New feature: A Brief History of Black British Spoken Word

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lex Wheatle won the Guardian children's fiction prize for Crongton Knights, his chronicle of life on a fictional London council estate. Now, his first work of historical fiction for teenagers proves to be every bit as compelling and relevant. Cane Warriors (Andersen Press, £12.99) is the story of a real-life slave rebellion in 18th-century Jamaica, seen through the eyes of 14-year-old Moa. Giving voice to characters seldom heard in British children's books, this is an important, powerful novel about hope, freedom and brotherhood.

Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam (HarperCollins, £7.99) takes the story of Salaam's wrongful conviction as one of the " Central Park Five" as the starting point for a searing fictional story of racial injustice in contemporary America. Alam Shahid, 16, is a promising art student until the night he is accused of assaulting a white boy. His trial and subsequent incarceration expose the devastating impact of systemic racism in a taut, non-linear verse novel with the potential to resonate in the same way as The Hate U Give.

Also showcasing the power of verse novels is Joseph Coelho's superb The Girl Who Became a Tree (Otter Barry, £12.99) Based on the ancient Greek myth of Daphne, who turned into a tree to avoid the attentions of Apollo, Coelho's modern heroine is grieving the loss of her father by escaping into her phone and the local library in search of solace and freedom. A series of rich and varied poems is accented by Kate Milner's dark, evocative art.

In another reworking of an ancient story, Deirdre Sullivan's Savage Her Reply (Little Island, £13.99) breathes new life into the Irish legend of the Children of Lir. The tale tells of four children turned into swans for 900 years by Aife, their jealous stepmother. Sullivan spins the story to Aife's perspective, revealing the motivations of a complex, notorious woman. This dark and lyrical feminist fable, paired with Karen Vaughan's bewitching illustrations, will appeal to older teenagers and beyond.

Yusef Salaam, left, one of the 'Central Park Five', and Ibi Zoboi. Photograph: Staci Nurse/Joseph Zoboi

Jennifer Donnelly's Poisoned (Hot Key, £7.99) is loosely based around the story of Snow White. A wicked stepmother, a huntsman and seven small men all feature, but protagonist Sophie is a world away from the passive Disney heroine. Scorned for her kindness and lack of killer instinct, hers is a journey of self-discovery and empowerment, wrapped up in a thrilling fantasy adventure. Look out too for a more nuanced stepmother, more concerned with power than being the fairest of them all.

Finally, Laura Wood serves up an irresistible helping of old-fashioned romance in Snowfall of Silver (Scholastic, £7.99). Freya, 18, runs away from her Cornish home to pursue her dream of being an actor. A chance meeting leads to work with a touring theatre company and the heady glamour of stage life. Wood beautifully captures the adrenaline of venturing out into the world, alongside the joy and heartache of first love. Gorgeous Christmas escapism.

* To order any of these books for a special price click on the titles or go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15

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Alex Wheatle won the Guardian children's fiction prize for Crongton Knights, his chronicle of life on a fictional London council estate. Now, his first work of historical fiction for teenagers proves to be every bit as compelling and relevant.

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Talks by brilliant kids and teens | TED Talks

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Talks from scientists, musicians, innovators, activists -- all under the age of 20. Watch these amazing wunderkinds.

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Non-fiction books to help teens understand the world around them

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Non-fiction books can be a great tool to help teenagers explore and investigate problems in their lives and around the world. These fantastic books...

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Lewis Carroll: "Jabberwocky": One of literature's best bits of nonsense

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As Alice wanders through the dreamscape of Looking-Glass Land in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There," she happens across a book written in an unintelligible language. Inside, she discovers an epic poem filled with nonsense, fearsome creatures, and whimsical language.

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It's never too early to start writing, and so we've created this fun list of 300 creative kids writing prompts for teacher and parents to use.

You'll love these fun ideas for kids writing prompts to use as creative sparks to get young imaginations writing in no time!

These are perfect to use as kids journal writing prompts, as short story writing prompts, or just for exercises to help students and children of all ages tap into their creativity. Maybe your kids will write an essay, maybe a poem, or maybe even a whole book!

Whether you are a teacher or parent looking to inspire your kids to write, or maybe even an adult who would like to practice writing with a more playful and young-hearted approach, I hope you find these creative writing prompts inspiring!

The Ultimate List of 300 Fun & Creative Writing Prompts for Kids

#1. Imagine a giant box is delivered to your front doorstep with your name on it. What's inside and what happens when you open it?

#2. Write a short story about what it might be like if you woke up one morning with a mermaid tail.

#3. Which is better, winter or summer? Write about the reasons why you think winter or summer is better.

#4. Write about what would it be like if you had an alligator as a pet.

#5. If you had $1,000, what would you buy and why?

#6. Write a story using these 5 words: apple, train, elephant, paper, banjo

#7. What do you want be when you grow up and why?

#8. Who is your favorite person on the planet? What do you like most about that person?

#9. If you could have any secret super power, what would you want it to be and why?

#10. Write about 3 places you would like to travel someday. What do these three places have in common?

#11. Write about a time you felt really happy. What happened? What made you feel happy?

#12. Imagine what would happen if someone shrunk you down to be only 1″ tall. How would your life change?

#13. If you were in charge of the whole world, what would you do to make the world a happier place?

#14. Write a story about what it would be like to climb to the very top of the highest mountain in the world.

#15. If you were in charge of planning the school lunch menu, what foods would you serve each day?

#16. What are some of your favorite animals? What do you like about them?

#17. Imagine that dogs take over the world. What do they make the humans do?

#18. Write a story about flying to outer space and discovering a new planet.

#19. You are a mad scientist and have invented a new vegetable. What is it called? What does it look like? What does it taste like? Most importantly: Is it safe to eat?

#20. You go to school one morning to discover your best friend has been turned into a frog by an evil witch! How do you help your friend?

#21. Describe what it is like when trees lose all of their leaves in the autumn season.

#22. Write about your favorite sport and why you like it so much.

#23. Imagine what it might be like to live on a boat all the time and write about it.

#24. If you had one wish, what would it be?

#25. Write about what you might do if you have the super power to become invisible.

#26. You are walking through the forest when one of the trees starts talking to you. What does it say? What do you do?

#27. The weather forecast is calling for a blizzard in the middle of the summer. What do you do?

#28. What types of transportation will people have in the future?

#29. What were some of your favorite toys when you very little? Do you still enjoy playing with them?

#30. What would a day in your life be like if you were a movie star?

#31. Imagine you've invented a time machine! What year do you travel to?

#32. What are your favorite things to do over summer vacation?

#33. What is your favorite holiday and why?

#34. If you could meet any fictional character from a book, who would it be?

#35. You are writing a travel guide for kids visiting your city. What places do you think they should visit?

#36. What is a food you hate? Write about it!

#37. Imagine what it would be like if there was no electricity. What would be different in your daily routine?

#38. You are building a new city! What types of things do you think your city needs? How will you convince people to move to your new city?

#39. What is your favorite movie? Write your review of the movie and why you think people should watch it.

#40. Imagine you get a magic sweater for your birthday. What happens when you wear the sweater? What do you do with these new found magical powers?

#41. You are the security guard at the zoo and someone has stolen a rhinoceros! How do you track down the thief?

#42. You have been invited to have lunch with the queen. What foods do you eat and what topics do you and the queen discuss?

#43. If you could design a school uniform, what types of clothes would you suggest? What colors would they be?

#44. Imagine you are a reporter interviewing a celebrity about their life. What questions do you ask?

#45. You are running a lemonade stand. Describe the steps for how you make lemonade and the types of customers you see during the day.

#46. Write a story about being the ruler of an underwater world.

#47. Write an acrostic poem for the word "treehouse".

#48. You decide to grow a sunflower, but the sunflower grows so tall it reaches up to the sky! Write about what happens when you decide to climb to the top. What do you discover?

#49. Imagine you look out the window and it is raining popsicles from the sky! Write a story about the experience.

#50. If you could be any animal, which one would you be and why?

#51. If you were on a spaceship, what would you be most excited about seeing?

#52. Do you have any pets at home? Write an essay about how you take care of your pets. If you do not have a pet, what type of pet might you like?

#53. Imagine you are opening a store that only sells items which are blue. What types of items do you sell?

#54. Have you ever lost something that is important to you? Were you able to find it?

#55. Write a story about a kid who is moving to a new school. How do you think they might feel?

#56. Rewrite the ending of your favorite fairy tale. For example, what would have happened if Cinderella never went to the ball?

#57. Have you ever forgotten to do your homework? What happened?

#58. Do you have a favorite song? Write about the type of music you like to listen to.

#59. Imagine your parents wake you up one morning to tell you they will take you to do anything you want to do for the whole day - you don't even have to go to school or do your chores. What would you choose to do and why?

#60. Do you like amusement parks? What are some of your favorite rides?

#61. Write a story using these three words: detective, piano, and pizza.

#62. Have you ever been to the beach? Write about your favorite things to do. If you have never been to the beach, what would you like to do the first time you visit?

#63. Is there a favorite tv show you like to watch? Write about your favorite character and why they are your favorite.

#64. Write a poem using onomatopoeia, where the words you use are pronounced similar to the sound they make. For example, buzz, bark, sizzle, slam and pop.

#65. Have you ever had to stand in line to wait a long time for something? What did you do while you waited? How did you feel while waiting? How did you feel once the wait was over?

#66. Is it a good idea to keep ALL secrets a secret? Write about examples of when it is okay to spill a secret - and when it isn't.

#67. Is there something you are good at doing? Write about your best strengths.

#68. What historical time period and location would you go back to live in if you could? Write about it!

#69. Write about 5 things you can do that are important for you to stay healthy and safe.

#70. Do you think thunderstorms are scary? Why or why not?

#71. What would you most like to learn over the next year? Think about things that interest you or questions you might have about the world and make a list!

#72. You are going on a trip to a jungle safari! What items do you pack in your suitcase?

#73. Imagine you are sitting at home one day and you hear someone shrieking in the living room they see a mouse in the house! Write a story about what might happen next.

#74. You are writing a letter to someone who is having a hard time making new friends at school. What do you write? What advice do you give them?

#75. Imagine you just met a magician - but their beloved rabbit who they pull out of a hat for all the tricks has been kidnapped! How do you help find the rabbit?

#76. Do you hear what I hear? Set a timer for 5 minutes and write about all of the sounds you hear in those 5 minutes.

#77. Imagine you go to get a haircut and they accidentally shave your head! How do you feel about that and what would you do?

#78. Do you find it easy to talk to people you don't know? What are some ways you can start up a conversation with someone you have never met before?

#79. Are there any chores you have to do at home? What are they? What do you like - and not like - about each one?

#80. Open up a random book to any page. Write for 5 minutes about the first word you read.

#81. Pretend you are a writer for your city's newspaper. Who would you like to interview for a news story and why?

#82. There are many fictional characters who live in unusual houses, such as the old woman who lived in a shoe. What kind of unusual house would you like to live in? Write about what it would be like to live in an unusual house!

#83. Write a list of 10 things you can do to practice kindness to others.

#84. Is there a homework subject you dread? Why do you not like getting homework in that subject?

#85. What is your favorite month of the year? Write about why you like it and some of your favorite things to do during that month.

#86. Imagine you are planning a surprise birthday party for someone. How do you keep it a surprise?

#87. Pretend you walked outside to find a sleeping dragon in the grass! Why is the dragon there? Is it a friendly dragon? What do you do? Write about it!

#88. What are you grateful for today and why?

#89. You were on your way to a very important event when you fell into a puddle. Now what?

#90. Have you ever watched a movie and didn't like how it ended? Write what you think should happen instead.

#91. Can you answer this riddle from Alice in Wonderland? How is a raven like a writing desk?

#92. Imagine you are the captain of a pirate ship. Write a diary entry for what your day was like.

#93. If you could start any type of business, what kind of business would you start? What types of products or services would you provide?

#94. Write a sequel to one of your favorite fairy tales. For example, what was Goldilocks's next adventure after she left the bears?

#95. What is something you are afraid of? What helps you to feel less afraid of something? What would you say to a friend who feels scared to help them feel less afraid?

#96. Write a letter to your future self in 20 years.

#97. In addition to basic survival needs such as food, water, air and shelter, what are 3 things you would you need to be happy?

#98. If you could invent a robot of any type who could do anything you imagine, what types of things would you would have the robot to do?

#99. Which do like better? Apples or Oranges? How are they alike? How are they different?

#100. Why did the chicken cross the road? You are a detective and are assigned to the case. How do solve the mystery?

#101. Write instructions for how to make your favorite snack. Be sure you add your favorite tips and suggestions for how to select the best ingredients!

#102. Imagine you borrowed a friend's favorite lucky pencil to help you pass a math test - but then it snapped in half! How will you ever tell the news to your friend?

#103. Look around the current room you are sitting in and choose 3 random objects that are nearby. Now write a story or poem that includes those three items!

#104. Write a letter to the author of a book you recently read and tell them what you liked most about the book.

#105. Ernest Hemingway is famous for writing a six word story. Can you write a story in just 6 words?

#106. What do you think will be the future for cell phones? Will people still use them in 25 years or will something else take its place?

#107. Do you want to go to college? Why or why not?

#108. Write a story or poem about a kitten who wanders off and gets lost. How does the kitten find its way home?

#109. Currently, it is required by law that kids go to school. Do you think this is a good or bad idea?

#110. If you could invent a new board game, what would it be called? How is it played? What are the rules? What makes it fun to play? Write about it!

#111. Imagine you come home to discover your entire bedroom is covered in ketchup! What on earth happened? What is your reaction? How do you clean everything up?

#112. What is something you learned today?

#113. Would you rather have a goldfish or shark as a pet?

#114. From A-Z: make a list of something for every letter of the alphabet.

#115. Have you ever gone fishing? If you have, did you like it? Why or why not? If you haven't, do you think you might want to?

#116. What is one of the most important things you do each and every day?

#117. Write a story about Gretchen the Grouch, a girl who is always angry! Will she ever be happy? Why is she so grumpy all of the time?

#118. How do you feel when someone takes something of yours without asking? What is a good way to deal with it when that happens?

#119. Write a poem that starts with the word "if".

#120. Write a story about a family of rabbits who live in the woods. What are some of the challenges they face?

#121. What clothes do you think are the most comfortable? What kind of clothes do you like to wear the most? What clothes do you NOT like to wear?

#122. Imagine there are no grocery stores and you must get your own food. What are some of the ways you find food? What types of things do you eat?

#123. What are 3 things you can do that are good for the environment?

#124. If you could meet any famous person today, who would you want to meet and why? What questions might you ask them?

#125. A tongue twister is a quick poem where many of the words start with the same letter and are similar in sound. For example, "Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers." Try writing your own with this fun kids writing prompt!

#126. What is the first thing you think of when you hear or see the word green?

#127. A hero is someone who is admired for their courage and achievements. What do you think makes someone a hero? Who are some of your heroes?

#128. What did you do during summer vacation last year? What do you want to do for summer vacation this year?

#129. Write a story about a super hero dog who saves the day! Who does the dog help and why?

#130. Would you rather live somewhere that is always cold, or somewhere that is always hot? Write about which one you would rather choose.

#131. Have you ever volunteered to help a charity? If so, write about the experience! If not, what are some charities you think you might like to volunteer for?

#132. What does the word courage mean to you?

#133. What makes you unique? What are some things about you that make you an individual?

#134. Have you ever been to a museum? What is your favorite thing to look at on display?

#135. What can you do to set a good example for others to be kind?

#136. A Tall Tale is a story that exaggerates something that actually happened. Write a tall tale about something that recently happened to you.

#137. What is one of your favorite toys that you think you might still want to have and play with when you are 22 years old?

#138. Oh no! Everyone around you is sick with a nasty cold! Write a silly poem about how you try to avoid catching their germs!

#139. Personification is when a non-living object takes on human characteristics. Write a story where you personify a common electronic gadget in your house, such as the Television or toaster.

#140. Write a poem using similes, which is when you say an object is like something else. Here is an example of a simile: "Her eyes were as blue as the sky."

#141. Have you ever read a book written by Dr. Suess? Write your own "Suess-style" story, complete with rhymes and made up words.

#142. Do you have any siblings? Think about what it might mean to be a good brother or sister and write about it!

#143. Make a list of questions to interview your parents or grandparents about what it was like when they were growing up as a kid. Then, ask them the questions and write about their answers!

#144. You are in charge of writing a new radio show just for kids! What topics will you talk about? What music do you play?

#145. What do you usually eat for breakfast every day? What, in your opinion, is the greatest breakfast food ever created? What makes it so great?

#146. Write a 12 line poem where every line is about a different month of the year.

#147. What is something you look forward to doing the most when you are an adult?

#148. Do you like to try new things? What is something new you have tried recently or would like to try?

#149. Imagine what it might be like to be alive in Egypt when the pyramids were built. Write about what it was like.

#150. A credo is a statement of personal beliefs. Try writing your own credo for things that you believe in and feel are important.

#151. The circus has come to town but they have no place to perform! How do you help the ringmaster find a place to put on a show?

#152. Do you like to act? What are some of your favorite actors or actresses? What do you think makes someone a good actor or actress?

#153. "Practice makes perfect" is a popular saying. What is something you like to practice so you can become better at it? A sport? A musical instrument? A special skill? Do you like to practice?

#154. Write about what it might be like to be water drops freezing and turning into ice.

#155. Do you think it is important to keep your room clean? What do you like about having a clean room?

#156. Imagine your parents are sending you away for a two week summer camp trip. Would you be excited? Why or why not?

#157. What are you currently learning about in history class? Write a fictional story about someone from the past you are learning about.

#158. Many wars have been fought in the past. Instead of going to war, what do you think countries could do to resolve their differences peacefully?

#159. Every year over 8 billion plastic bottles and cans are thrown away. What are some things you can do to help encourage your family and friends to recycle?

#160. Imagine if you were the principal of the school. What might you do differently? What things would you do that are the same? Write about it!

#161. Pretend that one day you are at your neighbor's house and you notice a strange noise coming from the basement. You go downstairs to investigate to see a large machine running with many lights and buttons. Why is it there?

#162. Write an essay that starts with the line, "Tomorrow, I hope..."

#163. If you could give one thing to every child in the world, what would you want to give them?

#164. Do you have a piggy bank at home? How do you earn money to add to your savings?

#165. What qualities make a house a home? What are 3 things you think every house should have?

#166. Would you rather go scuba diving or rock climbing? Write about which one you think you would like to do more and why.

#167. Do you think it is a good idea for kids to write a daily journal? What are some of the benefits of writing every day?

#168. Do you like watching fireworks or are they too noisy? Write about a time when you saw fireworks in the sky.

#169. Oh no! Your friend has turned into a statue! How did this happen? What do you do? Does your friend ever turn back into a person again?

#170. If you could be any movie character, who would you be and why?

#171. A mysterious message appears in code on your computer screen. What could it mean?

#172. If you could go to work with one of your parents for a day, what do you think the day would be like? What types of things do your parents do at work all day long?

#173. Imagine you are the President and you are creating a new national holiday. What is your holiday about? How is it celebrated? What day of the year do you celebrate? Write about it!

#174. You won a never-ending lifetime supply of spaghetti noodles! What will you do with all of these noodles?

#175. Would you rather be a bunny rabbit or a hawk? Why did you choose the one you chose?

#176. Your teacher has been acting mysterious lately. After school one day, you notice a weird green light shining through underneath the door of your classroom. What do you do? What is happening with your teacher?

#177. Write an article about tips for how kids can be more organized and study well for tests.

#178. Look at any product in your house and read the ingredients labels. Research what each ingredient is. Do you think these ingredients are good or bad for people?

#179. If you were a doctor, what do you think would be the most important part of your job every day?

#180. The school librarian needs your help! A truck just arrived with 2,000 books and she can't fit all the books onto the shelves! What do you do? How do you find a place to put all these books?

#181. Do you think it would be fun to plant a garden? What types of plants would you want to grow? Write about your garden ideas.

#182. What is a sport or activity you would like to try playing for the first time?

#183. Do you think kids should be allowed to do the same things as adults? What things do you think kids should be able to do that only grown-ups can?

#184. Imagine you and your parents switch places for a day. Your parents are the kids and you are now in charge! What would you do?

#185. Write a get-well letter to someone who has been sick. What can you say to make them feel better?

#186. If you could visit any planet in the solar system, which planet would you like to visit the most and why? Write about what it might be like.

#187. Have you ever been to a farm? What did you like about it? If you haven't been to a farm, do you think you might like to visit one? Why or why not?

#188. The mayor of the city has a big problem and needs your help! What is the problem and how will you solve it?

#189. Pretend your little sister ate carrots for dinner and the next morning woke up with rabbit ears! How did this happen? What do you do? Will she be a rabbit forever?

#190. Imagine you wake up in the morning to find out you get to relive any day of your life again for the whole day. What day would you want to experience again and why?

#191. Do you think you might like to be a firefighter? Why or why not?

#192. You are a lawyer and your client has been accused of stealing a car. How do you convince the jury your client is innocent?

#193. Think of the four elements: fire, air, earth, and water. Which of these four elements do you like the best?

#194. What would you do if you could be invisible for a whole day? Do you think you would enjoy it or be glad to be back to normal the next day? Write about it!

#195. Imagine you are a meteorologist and people are starting to get angry that your weather predictions are always wrong. What do you do?

#196. If you could create any law, what would it be? Why do you think the law is an important one to have?

#197. You are going incognito and need to hide to your identity so you aren't recognized or discovered while you walk through the city. What type of disguise do you wear?

#198. Write a persuasive letter to your parents explaining why you should get a new pet. Make sure you provide a convincing argument they won't be able to refuse!

#199. Your friend wants to do something dangerous. What should you do?

#200. How do you think the world would be different if there were no oceans?

#201. What do you do when someone disagrees with your opinions? Is there a better way to handle conflicting opinions?

#202. What do you think you as a kid could do to help encourage more people to read?

#203. Do you have a good luck charm? What makes this item lucky? When do you use it? How do you use it?

#204. What is at the end of a rainbow? Imagine you follow a rainbow to the end. What do you discover? Is it a pot of gold, or something else?

#205. What do you think the consequences should be for someone who is caught cheating on a test at school?

#206. Imagine you are riding your bike one day when you encounter an older kid who wants to steal your bike. What do you do?

#207. You are the lead singer and star of a famous rock and roll band, but there is one problem - your drummer is jealous of your fame! How do you solve this situation?

#208. If you could help a group of kids in any part of the world, what kids would you want to help the most and why? What are some things you think would help these kids?

#209. Everyone knows the house on the end of the street is haunted. What are some of the strange things that happen there? Why is the house haunted?

#210. You notice at school one day there is a door to a secret passage next to the janitor's closet and decide to explore. Where does it lead? Why is it there? Do you go alone or bring a friend along?

#211. A bucket list is a list of things you want to accomplish in your lifetime. What are 5 things on your bucket list?

#212. Imagine the perfect treehouse or clubhouse for you and all of your friends as a place to hang out. Describe what it is like inside.

#213. Do you get bored easily? Make a list of things you can do whenever you feel like you are bored and there is nothing fun to do!

#214. Now vs. Then: Think about how today is different from one year ago. How have you changed? What things in your life are different?

#215. Write your autobiography about your life.

#216. It's a heat wave! What do you do when the weather is hot? What are some of your favorite ways to stay cool?

#217. What are three important safety tips every kid should know to stay safe?

#218. What genre of books do you like to read the most? Write about the characteristics of the genre and list some of your favorite books as examples.

#219. Holiday Traditions: How does your family celebrate the different holidays and events? What are some traditions you do each and every year?

#220. Imagine one day in science class a science experiment goes terribly wrong and now you and all of your classmates have superpowers! What are your superpowers and what do you do with them?

#221. Who is favorite teacher? Why are they your favorite?

#222. You are baking a cake, but you accidentally put salt in the cake instead of sugar. Nobody will eat it! How do you feel? What will you do next time?

#223. Do you think it is important to have good table manners? What do you think some good manners to practice might be?

#224. Many schools no longer teach cursive handwriting. Do you think this is a good or bad thing? Do you know how to write cursive handwriting? Would you like to learn if you haven't?

#225. If you were the owner of a theme park, what types of rides and attractions would have? Describe what they would be like and why people would want to visit your park.

#226. Your parents give you $100 to spend at the grocery store. What do you buy and why?

#227. Some people who are alive today grew up without computers or video games. What would you do if you didn't have a computer or video games? How would life be different?

#228. You walk into your living room and discover there is a giant elephant standing there. How did the elephant get there? What do you do about it? How do you explain the elephant in the living room to your parents?

#229. Have you ever had a weird dream? What happened in the dream? What do you think it means?

#230. Do you like to draw or paint? Write a story inspired by a painting, doodle, or sketch.

#231. You are being sent on a mission to outer space to live in a space station for 5 years. What supplies do you pack and why?

#232. What is the scariest creature alive on earth? Describe in detail what makes it so horrifying.

#233. What do you think your pet might say if they could talk to you?

#234. Imagine your school is putting on a talent show. What act will you perform? What other acts will be in the show?

#235. If you could breathe under water, what would you do?

#236. What time of day do you think school should start? Write a convincing argument on why or why not the time of day school starts should change.

#237. If you were to start your own YouTube video channel, what would the videos on your channel be about?

#238. Do you like to cook? What are some things you like to make and eat?

#239. Your school is having a field day and you are in charge of planning the activities and games. What types of activities and games would you plan for the event?

#240. If you had a remote control drone that takes video of everything it sees from the sky and you could take it anywhere, what would you film? For example, the inside of a volcano or soar it over the plains of Africa.

#241. The Bermuda Triangle is an area of the ocean where many ships and planes have gone missing. Why do you think this could be? Write a story about what it might be like to travel there.

#242. There are 7 great wonders of the world - which one do you think is the most wonderful?

#243. If you could speak any foreign language fluently, which one would you like to speak and why?

#244. You are inventing a new flavor of ice cream! What is the new flavor called and what ingredients do you need to make it?

#245. Would you rather go to a baseball game or read a good book? What reasons do you have for your choice?

#246. You walk outside to get your mail and your mailbox starts talking to you! What does your mailbox have to say?

#247. Imagine you are a famous person. What are you most famous for? What is it like to be famous?

#248. What do you think would be the most fun job in the world to have? Give examples of why you think it would be a fun job to have.

#249. Write a poem about an object that is shiny and dazzling.

#250. Do you like to watch the Olympics? Why or why not? If yes, what is your favorite Olympic sport?

#251. What kind of car do you want to drive when you are older? Do you think learning to drive will be easy or hard?

#252. What do you think would make for a great gift to give someone on their birthday?

#253. Describe a time when you needed help and someone helped you. What did they help you with and how did it make you feel?

#254. If you could be any type of fruit or vegetable, what would you be and why?

#255. Do you think it is more important to have a good imagination or have all the facts proven?

#256. Do you have a favorite aunt, uncle, or another relative? Write a story about their life and why you like to be with them.

#257. Think of a time you laughed really, really hard. What was so funny? Why were you laughing? Write about it!

#258. Write a poem about an emotion. For example: happy, sad, angry, embarrassed, guilty.

#259. Do you ever have a hard time falling asleep? What are some things that help you feel sleepy?

#260. If you could drive a car, where would you drive and why?

#261. Imagine you are trading places with your friend for a day. What will it be like to be at their house? What will your friend think while they are at your house? Write about it!

#262. If you could break a world record, what would it be? What do you think would be necessary to be able to break the world record?

#263. Imagine you live in Colonial times. What would it be like to grow up as a kid in Colonial America?

#264. You are building a new city. What is the name of your city? What is the weather like? What buildings will you build?

#265. What do you think it would be like to work as a sailor on big ship in the ocean each day?

#266. Imagine you are the teacher for the day. What types of activities do you make the students in the class do?

#267. How would you feel if your parents told you that you would be getting a new baby brother or sister? Write about it!

#268. Do you know any good jokes? What are some of your favorite jokes? What makes them funny? Do you think you could write your own?

#269. Imagine you are floating down a river on a raft. What types of things can you see from the river that you normally wouldn't see from the land?

#270. You want to start a new hobby collecting something. What kinds of things would you collect and why?

#271. Your mom announces she is having a yard sale. Would you let her sell any of your things? Why or why not?

#272. Imagine you walk out your front door one morning and it is raining popcorn! What do you do?

#273. You are camping in the woods one night and hear a scary noise. What do you do? What might be the cause?

#274. What do you think might make kids really happy to go to school? What are some things you think schools should do so that it could be more fun?

#275. Today's lunch at the cafeteria was unusually horrible. You are a detective on the case to investigate. What do you think is the cause?

#276. If you had a tree that grows money, what would you do?

#277. What would you do if you had a unicorn as a pet?

#278. Would you rather go to the zoo or go to the aviary? Which one would you pick and why?

#279. What are some safety tips you should follow when riding a bike?

#280. You are designing the cover of a magazine. What are some of the headlines on the cover?

#281. Are you afraid of the dark? Why or why not?

#282. If you could learn to play any type of musical instrument, which one would you like to learn how to play and why?

#283. Imagine you are playing a sport that involves a ball, such as soccer, baseball or kickball. What would it be like if the ball could talk?

#284. You come home to discover a friendly alien has been living in your closet. What do you do? Why is there an alien in your closet?

#285. Is there something you are afraid of that you wish you weren't afraid of? Write about it.

#286. Write about the best party you've ever been to. What made the day fun and special?

#287. What makes you feel loved and cared about? What are some ways people can show you that they love and care about you?

#288. There is a kite flying competition coming up and you are going to design your own kite. What will your kite look like? What colors will it be? Will it have any certain shape?

#289. You are given the challenge to drop an egg on the floor - without it breaking! What are some things you might try to make sure the egg won't break?

#290. What are some of the things you can do every day to stay healthy?

#291. Do you think grown-ups are boring? Why do you think they are so boring all of the time? What is something fun that boring grown-ups could do instead of being so boring?

#292. Write a lyrical poem or song about what kids do while they are at school all day long.

#293. What are the first things you like to do when you are done with school each day? What are some of the activities you like when you are not at school?

#294. Imagine dinosaurs were still alive today. How do you think our lives would be different?

#295. Would you rather visit a volcano or a desert? Which one would you choose and why?

#296. Is there a sound you think is annoying? What types of sounds drive you crazy? Write about them!

#297. What do you think it would be like to be the size of an ant for a day? What types of things would you do?

#298. Imagine one of your stuffed animals comes to life and starts talking to you. What types of things will you talk about? What will you do?

#299. What makes you feel happiest? Write about the things in life that make you feel happy!

#300. Imagine there is no gravity. What kind of things would you do you for fun? How would some of the things you already do for fun be different?

Parents and teachers, I hope you enjoyed these 300 writing prompts for kids and that you will use them to inspire your children's creative imaginations.

These prompts of course can be used in a number of different ways and can be adapted for a variety of different styles of writing!

What do you think? Do you think these are good conversation and story starters for kids? Do you have any ideas for writing prompts you would like to share?

And of course, if you'd like to make it super fun and easy to use these prompts at home or in your classroom, be sure to get our ad-free printable version of these kids writing prompt cards now available in my Etsy shop.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on different creative writing ideas and topics for kids to write about! Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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300 Creative Writing Prompts for Kids | ThinkWritten

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We created this list of 300 creative writing prompts for kids to help parents and teachers spark the imaginations of young writers everywhere! These writing prompts for children are perfect as journal prompts, daily practice, or just for fun!

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"disappearing from victoria before the fire alert hits catastrophic"

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"disappearing from victoria before the fire alert hits catastrophic"

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I love this poem..... My sister lives in Australia - Mrs J

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April Egan writes about her winning poem: "I grew up in Australia. In January, I saw it consumed by fire while I was cold and stagnant on the Jurassic Coast. Fires were something we were used to, and they were almost never serious enough to make international news - and now it was all anybody spoke about.

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Hate vocal fry? Bothered by the use of "like" and "just"? Think uptalk makes people sound less confident? If so, you may find yourself growing increasingly unpopular-there's a of criticizing young women's speech is just old-fashioned sexism.

I agree, but I think we can go even further: young women's speech isn't just acceptable-it's revolutionary. And if we value disruptors and innovation, we shouldn't just be tolerating young women's speech-we should be celebrating it. To use a modern metaphor, young women are the Uber of language.

What does it mean to disrupt language? Let's start with the great English disruptor: William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare is celebrated to this day not just because he wrote a mean soliloquy but because of what he added to our language- he's said to have brought in over 1,700 words. But recent scholars have called that number of words into question. As Katherine Martin, head of US Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, has pointed out, if Shakespeare was inventing dozens of new words per play, how would his audience have understood him? Rather, it's likely that Shakespeare had an excellent grasp of the vernacular and was merely writing down words that his audience was already using.

We shouldn't just be tolerating young women's speech-we should be celebrating it.

So if Shakespeare wasn't disrupting the English language, who was? And how did we get from Shakespearean English to the version we speak now? That's right: young women.

A pair of linguists, Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg at the University of Helsinki, conducted a study that combed through 6,000 personal letters written between 1417 and 1681. The pair looked at fourteen language changes that occurred during this period, things like the eradication of ye, the switch from "mine eyes" to "my eyes," and the change from hath, doth, maketh to has, does, makes.

In 11 out of the 14 changes, they found that female letter-writers were changing the way they wrote faster than male letter-writers. In the three exceptional cases where the men were ahead of the women, those particular changes were linked to men's greater access to education at the time. In other words, women are reliably ahead of the game when it comes to word-of-mouth linguistic changes.

This trend hasn't changed much. While young people have long driven innovation, it's not just an age thing-it's also a gender thing. During the decades that sociolinguists have been researching the question, they've continually found evidence that women lead linguistic change.

Young women are leading the change away from the distinctive /r/ pronunciation of New York City, they're leading the vowel changes in US cities around the Great Lakes, the /aw/ pronunciation in Toronto and Vancouver, the "ch" pronunciation in Panama, the /r/ pronunciation in Montreal, the ne deletion in Tours, /t/ and /d/ pronunciations in Cairo Arabic, vowel pronunciation in Paris, not to mention entire language shifts, like that from Hungarian to German in Austria -and the list goes on.

Plus, young women are on the bleeding edge of those linguistic changes that periodically sweep through the media's trend sections, from uptalk to "selfie" to the quotative like to vocal fry.

The role that young women play as language disruptors is so well-established at this point it's practically boring to sociolinguists. The founder of modern sociolinguistics, William Labov, observed that women lead 90% of linguistic change-in a paper he wrote 25 years ago. Researchers continue to confirm his findings.

It takes about a generation for the language patterns started among young women to jump over to men. Uptalk, for example, which is associated with Valley Girls in the 1970s, among young men today. In other words, women learn language from their peers; men learn it from their mothers.

If women are such natural linguistic innovators, why do they get criticized for the same thing that we praise Shakespeare for?

While the pattern is well-established, we still don't know for sure yet why young women reliably lead linguistic innovation. Maybe it's nature, maybe it's nurture; but we do know that young women tend to be more socially aware, more empathetic, and more concerned about how their peers perceive them. This may translate into a greater facility for linguistic disruption. Women also tend to have larger social networks, which means they're more likely to be exposed to a greater diversity of language innovations.

And of course, women are still likely to spend more time caring for children than men-even if a particular woman works outside the home, daycare workers and elementary school teachers are disproportionately female. This means that even if young men were disrupting language as much as women, they would be hard-pressed to pass it along.

All of this leads us to the biggest question: if women are such natural linguistic innovators, why do they get criticized for the same thing that we praise Shakespeare for? Plain old-fashioned sexism.

Our society takes middle-aged men more seriously than young women for a whole host of reasons, so it's only logical that we have also been conditioned to automatically respect the tone and cadence of the typical male voice, as well as their word choices.

Sure, let's encourage young women to speak with confidence, but not by avoiding vocal fry or "like" or whatever the next linguistic disruption is. Let's tell them to speak with confidence because they're participating in a millennia-old cycle of linguistic innovation-and one that generations of powerful men still haven't figured out how to crack.

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Move over Shakespeare, teen girls are the real language disruptors

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Hate vocal fry? Bothered by the use of "like" and "just"? Think uptalk makes people sound less confident? If so, you may find yourself growing increasingly unpopular-there's a of criticizing young women's speech is just old-fashioned sexism. I agree, but I think we can go even further: young women's speech isn't just acceptable-it's revolutionary.

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A book blogger, YouTuber and young adult author worth checking out! (http://queenofcontemporary.com/)

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booktube lucythereader classics "classics booktube" "classic books" "reading classics" "english lit" "english literature"

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Hello! My name is Lucy Powrie, and I'm an author, booktuber and book blogger from the UK. In 2019, my debut novel for teenagers, The Paper & Hearts Society, was published by Hodder Children's Books in the UK, Australia, Ireland and South Africa.

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In 2015, we put together a list of the 100 best books for children from the last 100 years. The books below are ones suitable for children and teen...

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Spelling list - in case you want to buff up your spelling 

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Spelling list - in case you want to buff up your spelling 

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Could be good if you want to get into reading but aren't sure where to start!

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Look, we all loved The Hunger Games and Percy Jackson, but some days, dystopian governments and secret mythical worlds can feel a bit...overwhelming. Some days call for slowing things down and visiting stories that kids have loved for decades-reading about Anne Shirley breaking a slate over Gilbert's head or about Jo March selling her first stories to the newspaper. These classics have long provided a nostalgic escape from our busy world, whether you're a kid discovering a beloved story for the first time or an adult revisiting an old favorite.

But hey, we get it! Books written that long ago can be a tough sell for kids today. Luckily, there are new versions of these classic stories coming out that combine the well-loved story with a fresh visual format. These 8 graphic adaptations of classic children's books are perfect for both existing fans and new ones, with accessible illustrations that will draw in readers of all ages.

1) Anne of Green Gables

"When Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert decide to adopt an orphan who can help manage their family farm, they have no idea what delightful trouble awaits them. With flame-red hair and an unstoppable imagination, 11-year-old Anne Shirley takes Green Gables by storm."

Perfect for reluctant readers and kindred spirits alike, this adaptation of Anne's (mis)adventures is a charmingly accessible gateway to this classic story.

2) Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy

"Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are having a really tough year: with their father serving in the military overseas, they must work overtime to make ends meet...and each girl is struggling in her own way. Whether it's school woes, health issues, boy troubles, or simply feeling lost, the March sisters all need the same thing: support from each other. Only by coming together-and sharing lots of laughs and tears-will these four young women find the courage to discover who they truly are as individuals...and as a family."

This retelling of Little Women brings Louisa May Alcott's classic beautifully into the 21st century. Four sisters from a blended family experience the joys and challenges of living in NYC with the same love and laughter that the March sisters shared in the Civil War era version.

3) Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation

"For both young readers and adults, The Diary of Anne Frank continues to capture the remarkable spirit of Anne Frank, who for a time survived the worst horror the modern world has seen-and who remained triumphantly and heartbreakingly human throughout her ordeal."

Including much of the original text, this graphic adaptation adds illustrations that interpret and deepen the reader's understanding of Anne's life and her stalwart hope throughout the Holocaust.

"More than three thousand years ago, two armies faced each other in an epic battle that rewrote history and came to be known as the Trojan War. The Iliad, Homer's legendary account of this nine-year ordeal, is considered the greatest war story of all time and one of the most important works of Western literature. In this stunning graphic novel adaptation-a thoroughly researched and artfully rendered masterwork-renowned illustrator Gareth Hinds captures all the grim glory of Homer's epic."

Read Percy Jackson and suddenly develop a thirst for all things Ancient Greek? Welcome to the club. This graphic novel takes one of the most ancient stories (written in dactylic hexameter-try saying that five times fast) and breaks it down for those of us Greek mythology fiends who don't want to spend hours deciphering archaic grammar.

5) Les Misérables

"Victor Hugo's classic tale of crime and justice comes to life in this graphic retelling for kids. Escaped convict Jean Valjean vows to change his ways and becomes a kind and respected man. But with the merciless Inspector Javert hunting him down, can Jean Valjean ever truly escape his past, protect those he loves, and find redemption?"

With more accessible language and engaging illustrations, this adaptation breaks down the 1,200-page novel so that younger readers can enjoy Victor Hugo's unforgettable story. Complete with background on the original, discussion questions, and writing prompts, this graphic novel edition is a valuable resource for any educator!

6) The Giver: The Graphic Novel

"In this new edition, readers experience the haunting story of twelve-year-old Jonas and his seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment, through the brilliant art of P. Craig Russell that truly brings The Giver to life. Witness Jonas's assignment as the Receiver of Memory, watch as he begins to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community, and follow the explosion of color into his world like never before."

For reluctant readers looking for an entryway into the original, this new edition illuminates the story through accessible language and gorgeous illustrations so that everyone can enjoy.

7) To Kill a Mockingbird

"A haunting portrait of race and class, innocence and injustice, hypocrisy and heroism, tradition and transformation in the Deep South of the 1930s, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird remains as important today as it was upon its initial publication in 1960, during the turbulent years of the Civil Rights movement."

Harper Lee's portrait of the complexities of human nature is rendered even more poignant by artist Fred Fordham's vivid illustrations. Scout, Jem, and Boo Radley are brought stunningly to life alongside much of the original text.

8) A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel

"The world already knows Meg and Charles Wallace Murry, Calvin O'Keefe, and the three Mrs―Who, Whatsit, and Which―the memorable and wonderful characters who fight off a dark force and save our universe in the Newbery Award-winning classic A Wrinkle in Time. But in 50 years of publication, the book has never been illustrated."

In this adaptation, readers can immerse themselves in Hope Larson's illustrations which give form to hard-to-visualize concepts like "tessering." Gorgeous renderings of favorite characters alongside the original engrossing story are sure to delight new and old fans alike!

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Look, we all loved The Hunger Games and Percy Jackson, but some days, dystopian governments and secret mythical worlds can feel a bit...overwhelming.

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Scottish Book Trust - 50 Word Writing Competition

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Scottish Book Trust - 50 Word Writing Competition

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All ages!

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Can you write a story in just 50 words? We'll provide a prompt to get you started, but where the story goes from there is entirely up to you.

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"Right" and "write" have the same pronunciation but mean different things - these are known as homophones. There are more homophones in the English language than you can shake a stick at!

Homophones are two or more words which sound the same but have different meanings; they may or may not be spelled differently. A pair of "homonyms" are spelled and pronounced the same, but have different meanings. All homonyms are also homophones.

Here are some pairs with which you might be familiar: stair/stare; pear/pair; tale/tail; aisle/isle; flour/flower; mousse/moose; jeans/genes; toad/towed. Can you see the potential for humour? Lots of jokes are based on homophones and sometimes poetry draws on the associations a word has with its homophone. Christmas cracker jokes are famous for their homophones, such as this one: What does Santa say while gardening? Hoe, hoe, hoe..........

Try our first quiz on words that are often confused with each other.

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KS3 Homophones | Learn Different Words which Sound the Same

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One thing students in Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 will learn about in English is homophones. These are words which sound the same but have different meanings like Right, Write and Wright. They can be confusing if you can hear but can't see them!

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Learn a new word every day with the Word of the Day from Merriam-Webster, the most trusted authority on American English. Now available as a podcast, daily e-mail, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

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Who today remembers the plays of AA Milne or the political writing of Erich Kästner? Yet their children's books are read the world over.

Salman Rushdie has suggested that of all his work - including Midnight's Children, which won the Best of the Booker - his children's books may last the longest. He recalled being urged to write them by publisher Kurt Maschler, who had published Kästner's Emil and the Detectives.

"As Kurt Maschler said to me, 'It's the only one of his books that's still in print!' That was a lesson I didn't forget. It may end up that Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Luka and the Fire of Life are the only books of mine that remain in print. And that would be fine, actually."

Neil Gaiman tells the similar story of AA Milne, who is no longer remembered as a West End playwright or features editor of Punch, but only as "the author of two books of short stories and two books of verse for small children".

It's striking how long children's books can last. One explanation may be the way in which they're read. They become part of our emotional autobiographies, acquiring associations and memories, more like music than prose.

Another explanation may lie in the fact that children's books are designed with re-reading in mind. For all children's writers are conscious that our books may be re-read by children themselves.

"Yes, kids read and re-read favourite books," says Francesca Simon. "My favourite Horrid Henry books to sign are the ones which are so dog-eared and stained through re-reading they are practically translucent. When Simon Mayo interviewed me, he commented that he had read them to his kids over 200 times. He looked like a man undergoing penance ..."

A similar view is taken by Gaiman, who writes for all ages. "When I'm writing for kids," he says, "I'm always assuming that a story, if it is loved, is going to be re-read. So I try and be much more conscious of it than I am with adults, just in terms of word choices. I once said that while I could not justify every word in American Gods, I can justify every single word in Coraline."

Many parents will know this already. They sometimes even fear there's something wrong with a child who re-reads favourite books rather than new ones.

"There's nothing wrong with them," says Charlotte Hacking, of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE). "Children need to read and re-read and keep coming back to books, looking at them in different ways. It's actually a really good thing; it allows you to go deeper."

So re-reading is a given for children's authors. It's one reason why we try to write books that have many layers and work on different levels, rewarding re-reading by growing richer each time.

But if this is true, then why are children's books rarely considered for literary prizes such as the Man Booker and the Costa? This year's Costa coverage barely considered the possibility that the children's prize-winner, Kate Saunders's Five Children on the Western Front, might win the overall prize.

Yet it's an exceptional book that already feels like a classic. In a stunning twist on E Nesbit's Five Children and It, Saunders takes those carefree Edwardian children and plunges them into the first world war. For they belonged to the generation who would die in the trenches, and she works this to devastating emotional effect.

"It's an amazing book," says Guardian children's books editor Julia Eccleshare. "If that was an adult book working with Jane Austen, as it were, people would be wowing about it. The textual play on a classic, in the adult world, would receive far more praise than I think she has been noticed for - yet."

Perhaps it's unsurprising, given that only one winner of the Costa/Whitbread children's book prize has ever won the overall book of the year. That was Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass, back in 2001.

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The Amber Spyglass Illustration: PR

"It hasn't happened since," says Pullman. "But one day they'll have to find a book they just have to give it to. Maybe one day a children's book will get the Booker prize. Why not? Why not a children's author winning the Nobel prize?"

Sarah Churchwell, one of last year's Booker judges, has written about the judging process. She said that it "asks of books something they're not really designed for: to be read three times in a row by people probing for weakness. Most books just crumble under that kind of pressure: only the most rich, the most layered, continue to dazzle and reveal ever more."

She concluded that only two books on last year's list met this criterion. Yet as a children's writer, I couldn't help thinking that this is exactly what all children's books are designed to do. They may achieve it to a greater or lesser degree, but that's always the aim.

Children's laureate Malorie Blackman agrees. "Call me biased," she says, "but I find the standard of storytelling in children's books and books for young adults second to none. I find it telling that even now, there are far more children's books and books for teens that I'd like to re-read than books for adults."

These are the books that get handed down through generations, becoming classics, but perhaps their readability works against them. Reflecting on the children's books he still re-reads, Pullman observes: "Part of the joy of all these books is a sort of perfect lightness and grace in the words. Everything is in its right place. Not a comma needs changing. Things like that make it possible to read them again and again without fatigue."

That lightness and grace is a hallmark of the best children's writing, along with the multi-layered richness Churchwell found so rare. Yet only The Amber Spyglass and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time have ever appeared on a Booker longlist. Not one single children's book has made the shortlist, let alone won, in the history of the prize.

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Luke Treadaway as Christopher in The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Meanwhile, media coverage of children's books is vanishingly small. Former Children's laureate Julia Donaldson has pointed out that they get less than one in 40 of all review spaces. And yet children's books now account for one in four of all books sold in the UK. This is the most vibrant sector of British publishing, outperforming adult fiction in 2014.

A generational shift may now be occurring. For many of my generation, growing up in the 1970s with books like Watership Down, story is story, regardless of age. That's even truer of younger writers.

"I certainly don't see children's books as being in any way lesser than adult literature," says Katherine Woodfine, born in the 1980s, whose debut The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow is published this year. "If anything, I'd argue the opposite. Children's books can have a hugely powerful effect on their readers, helping to shape and inform their view of the world, in a way that adult books rarely achieve. They're the first literature we engage with, and what's more, they're often the first art works we ever encounter."

Woodfine's response to the lack of coverage is to create new media space. Together with Melissa Cox of Waterstones, she hosts Down the Rabbit Hole on Resonance 104.4FM: the only dedicated children's books radio show. It's part of a vibrant online community, too. Twitter, the Guardian children's books site, and other digital spaces are connecting writers, readers, bloggers, vloggers, booksellers, librarians and teachers as never before, while hashtag chats such as #ukyachat and #ukmgchat regularly trend.

"Since JK Rowling's Harry Potter and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials," Jeanette Winterson has observed, "children's literature has been repositioned as central, not peripheral, shifting what children read, what we write about what children read, and what we read as adults. At last we seem to understand that imagination is ageless."

It's true that such books brought children's fiction to higher prominence in the early 2000s, but they are part of a literature that is continually regenerating itself. And as the generation who grew up on Rowling and Pullman begin to publish their own books, it will only go further.

Yet neither media coverage nor literary prizes have kept pace. Until they do, anyone looking for the richest contemporary literature might be advised to consult the lists for prizes such as the Guardian children's fiction award and the Carnegie medal instead. Because that is where you will find book after book that stands up to re-reading: the true classics of the future.

Children's books that we re-read

Philip Pullman:
The Magic Pudding. Anything by Arthur Ransome. Tove Jansson's Moomins.

Neil Gaiman:
The Narnia books. The Mary Poppins books. The Wind In the Willows.

Francesca Simon:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Half Magic, by Edward Eager. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

Andrew Motion (former poet laureate and Man Booker prize jury chair):
Treasure Island and other books by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Erica Wagner (former Times literary editor and Man Booker prize judge):
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin. The Owl Service by Alan Garner. Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban. All of George and Martha by James Marshall. All of Maurice Sendak. Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Daniel Hahn (translator and chair of the Society Of Authors):
Asterix.

Charlotte Higgins (Guardian chief culture writer)
The Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley.
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Children's books are never just for children

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Who today remembers the plays of AA Milne or the political writing of Erich Kästner? Yet their children's books are read the world over. Salman Rushdie has suggested that of all his work - including Midnight's Children, which won the Best of the Booker - his children's books may last the longest.

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Throughout history, challenging circumstances have given rise to new ways of expressing those challenges. George Eliot, the 19th Century writer who was famously frustrated by rigid gender and lifestyle norms, is credited with the first recorded use of the word 'frustrating'. More recently, Brexit led to a flowering of new words, including the inevitable 'Bremain' and 'Bregret', and a repurposing of existing words, such as 'backstop'.

While Brexit may be the closest parallel, the speed of the linguistic change we're seeing with Covid-19 is unprecedented, says Robert Lawson, a sociolinguist at Birmingham City University. Lawson attributes this to multiple factors: the dizzying pace at which the virus has spread, its dominance in the media and global interconnectivity at a time when social media and remote contact are so important.

Many of the newly popular terms relate to the socially distanced nature of human contact these days, such as 'virtual happy hour', 'covideo party' and 'quarantine and chill'. Many use 'corona' as a prefix, whether Polish speakers convert 'coronavirus' into a verb or English speakers wonder how 'coronababies' (the children born or conceived during the pandemic) will fare. And, of course, there are abbreviations, like the ubiquitous 'WFH' and the life-saving 'PPE'.
Old words in a new light
Like everyone else, lexicologists are scrambling to keep up with the changes the pandemic has wrought. According to Fiona McPherson, the senior editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), back in December 'coronavirus' appeared only 0.03 times per million tokens (tokens are the smallest units of language collected and tracked in the OED corpus). The term 'Covid-19' was only coined in February, when the WHO announced the official name of the virus. But in April, the figures for both 'Covid-19' and 'coronavirus' had skyrocketed to about 1,750 per million tokens (suggesting that the two terms are now being used at roughly the same frequency).

Innovative signs: In the UK, 'covidiots' is being used to described those ignoring social distancing rules

All of the terms added to the OED in April, in an unscheduled update, were related to the pandemic in some way, including 'infodemic' and 'elbow bump'. But McPherson notes that the only actual new word added to the dictionary is 'Covid-19'. The others are pre-existing terms that have gained new resonance at a time when many people are subject to a 'stay-at-home order' (US), 'movement control order' (Malaysia) or 'enhanced community quarantine' (Philippines).

"Although a lot of the words we're using just now and a lot of the terminology is actually older, a lot of it seems fairly new. 'Coronavirus' itself goes back to the 1960s," she points out.

What McPherson calls the "nuancing of already existing words" can in some cases be subtly harmful. War metaphors invoking 'battles' and 'front-lines' are being widely applied to the pandemic, yet thinking only in terms of a wartime emergency can detract from longer-term structural changes needed. This has given rise to the project #ReframeCovid, in which linguists collect crowdsourced examples of alternatives to war language.

Inés Olza, a linguist at the University of Navarra in Spain, says she started the project spontaneously on Twitter. She understands the temptation to invoke war metaphors, especially at the start of the pandemic when they were necessary to build unity and mobilise swiftly. But "a sustained use of that metaphor and abuse of it, and the lack of alternative frames, might generate anxiety and might distort things about the pandemic", she believes.

As well, terms such as 'natural disaster' and 'perfect storm' can create the impression that the pandemic was inevitable and unavoidable, neglecting the political, economic and environmental contexts that make certain people more exposed. Some healthcare workers have expressed their frustration at being called 'heroes', rather than seen as complex, frightened individuals doing a job, who need protective equipment and policy rather than relying on their own sacrifices.

In some cases the language being used isn't appreciated: this US healthcare worker is protesting against a lack of PPE

"Speakers are free to use the metaphors they want," Olza emphasises. "We are not censors." But she and some of her fellow linguists believe that it's useful to reflect on language and to have alternative framings for discussing the pandemic - beyond militaristic language that can obscure the roles of individuals and communities, and toward expressions that communicate collective care and individual responsibility. She says that Germans have been especially good at finding non-war terms. German's compounding of terms, for instance, has allowed for one-off words like 'Öffnungsdiskussionsorgien' ('orgies of discussion') to describe the seemingly endless policy debates over reopening.
Why humour helps
Overall, there's a wealth of linguistic creativity that hasn't yet entered the dictionary, but reflects the role of novel language as a coping mechanism. These innovative usages, Lawson says, "allow us to name whatever it is that's going on in the world. And once you can name the practices, the events, the social conditions around a particular event, it just gives people a shared vocabulary that they can all use as a bit of a shorthand. I think ultimately if you can name it, you can talk about it; and if you can talk about it, then it can help people cope and get a handle on really difficult situations".

Writer Karen Russell has found the newly ubiquitous term 'flatten the curve' to be reassuring - a reminder of the importance of both individual and collective action, which "alchemizes fear into action". And both the practice and the terminology of 'caremongering', used for instance in Canadian and Indian English, allow for an alternative to scaremongering.

Beyond earnest words like these, a kind of slightly anxious humour is central to many of the 'coronacoinages'. The German 'coronaspeck', like the English 'Covid 19', playfully refers to stress eating amid stay-at-home orders. The Spanish 'covidiota' and 'coronaburro' (a play on 'burro', the word for donkey) poke fun at the people disregarding public health advice. 'Doomscrolling' describes the hypnotic state of endlessly reading grim internet news. Lawson's favourite, 'Blursday', captures the weakening sense of time when so many days bleed into each other.

Australian English, no stranger to light-hearted abbreviations, has produced 'quaz' for 'quarantine' and 'sanny' for 'sanitiser'. Queer and black communities, so often a wellspring of linguistic innovation, have given rise to 'Miss Rona' as a slang term for the virus. And for the unsayable, there are always emojis. The folded hands emoji, the medical mask emoji, and the microbe emoji (yes, that exists) have all become more popular during the pandemic.

Some of these emojis and terms might seem flippant, but "I don't think that by having a little bit of light in the dark, people are making light of the situation", says McPherson. Lawson agrees: "If you can laugh at them, it makes things more manageable almost, and just helps with people's psychological health more than anything else."

Linguists believe that many of the terms currently in vogue won't endure. The ones with a stronger chance of sticking around post-pandemic are those that describe lasting behavioural changes, such as 'zoombombing', which is influenced by 'photobombing' and describes the practice of invading someone else's video call. McPherson reckons that 'zoombombing' could become a generic term (like 'hoovering' up a mess) even if the company Zoom loses its market dominance.

Ingenuity with vocabulary can also communicate that the current hardships, like many of the coronacoinages, won't last forever. Olza has taken to referring to the tasks on her 'corona-agenda', which can be a subtle way of asking for people's patience with her temporarily disrupted schedule. Eventually "I will get my usual agenda back," she says hopefully.

Until then, bring on the quarantinis.

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Why we've created new language for coronavirus

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From 'covidiots' to 'quarantine and chill', the pandemic has led to many terms that help people laugh and commiserate.

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If you want to become a better writer, the best thing you can do is practice writing every single day. Writing prompts are useful because we know sometimes it can be hard to think of what to write about!

To help you brainstorm, we put together this list of 365 creative writing prompts to give you something to write about daily.

Here are 365 Creative Writing Prompts to Inspire:

Whether you write short stories, poems, or like to keep a journal - these will stretch your imagination and give you some ideas for topics to write about!

1. Outside the Window: What's the weather outside your window doing right now? If that's not inspiring, what's the weather like somewhere you wish you could be?

2. The Unrequited love poem: How do you feel when you love someone who does not love you back?

3. The Vessel: Write about a ship or other vehicle that can take you somewhere different from where you are now.

4. Dancing: Who's dancing and why are they tapping those toes?

5. Food: What's for breakfast? Dinner? Lunch? Or maybe you could write a poem about that time you met a friend at a cafe.

6. Eye Contact: Write about two people seeing each other for the first time.

7. The Rocket-ship: Write about a rocket-ship on its way to the moon or a distant galaxy far, far, away.

8. Dream-catcher: Write something inspired by a recent dream you had.

9. Animals: Choose an animal. Write about it!

10. Friendship: Write about being friends with someone.

11. Dragon: Envision a dragon. Do you battle him? Or is the dragon friendly? Use descriptive language.

12. Greeting: Write a story or poem that starts with the word "hello" or another greeting.

13. The Letter: Write a poem or story using words from a famous letter or inspired by a letter someone sent you.

14. The Found Poem: Read a book and circle some words on a page. Use those words to craft a poem. Alternatively, you can cut out words and phrases from magazines.

15. Eavesdropper: Create a poem, short story, or journal entry about a conversation you've overheard.

16. Addict: Everyone's addicted to something in some shape or form. What are things you can't go without?

17. Dictionary Definition: Open up a dictionary to a random word. Define what that word means to you.

18. Cleaning: Hey, even writers and creative artists have to do housework sometimes. Write about doing laundry, dishes, and other cleaning activities.

19. Great Minds: Write about someone you admire and you thought to have had a beautiful mind.

20. Missed Connections: If you go to Craigslist, there is a "Missed Connections" section where you can find some interesting storylines to inspire your writing.

21. Foreclosure: Write a poem or short story about someone who has lost or is about to lose their home.

22. Smoke, Fog, and Haze: Write about not being able to see ahead of you.

23. Sugar: Write something so sweet, it makes your teeth hurt.

24. Numbers: Write a poem or journal entry about numbers that have special meaning to you.

25. Dread: Write about doing something you don't want to do.

26. Fear: What scares you a little? What do you feel when scared? How do you react?

27. Closed Doors: What's behind the door? Why is it closed?

28. Shadow: Imagine you are someone's shadow for a day.

29. Good Vibes: What makes you smile? What makes you happy?

30. Shopping: Write about your shopping wishlist and how you like to spend money.

31. The Professor: Write about a teacher that has influenced you.

32. Rewrite: Take any poem or short story you enjoy. Rewrite it in your own words.

33. Jewelry: Write about a piece of jewelry. Who does it belong to?

34. Sounds: Sit outside for about an hour. Write down the sounds you hear.

35. War and Peace: Write about a recent conflict that you dealt with in your life.

36. Frame It: Write a poem or some phrases that would make for good wall art in your home.

37. Puzzle: Write about putting together the pieces of puzzles.

38. Fire-starters: Write about building a fire.

39. Coffee & Tea: Surely you drink one or the other or know someone who does- write about it!

40. Car Keys: Write about someone getting their driver's license for the first time.

41. What You Don't Know: Write about a secret you've kept from someone else or how you feel when you know someone is keeping a secret from you.

42. Warehouse: Write about being inside an old abandoned warehouse.

43. The Sound of Silence: Write about staying quiet when you feel like shouting.

44. Insult: Write about being insulted. How do you feel? Why do you think the other person insulted you?

45. Mirror, Mirror: What if you mirror started talking to you? What might the mirror say?

46. Dirty: Write a poem about getting covered in mud.

47. Light Switch: Write about coming out of the dark and seeing the light.

48. The Stars: Take inspiration from a night sky. Or, write about a time when "the stars aligned" in your horoscope.

49. Joke Poem: What did the wall say to the other wall? Meet you at the corner! Write something inspired by a favorite joke.

50. Just Say No: Write about the power you felt when you told someone no.

51: Sunrise/Sunset: The sun comes up, the sun goes down. It goes round and round. Write something inspiring about the sunrise or sunset.

52. Memory Lane: What does Memory Lane look like? How do you get there?

53. Tear-Jerker: Watch a movie that makes you cry. Write about that scene in the movie.

54. Dear Diary: Write a poem or short story about a diary entry you've read or imagined.

55. Holding Hands: The first time you held someone's hand.

56. Photograph: Write a story or journal entry influenced by a photograph you see online or in a magazine.

57. Alarm Clock: Write about waking up.

58. Darkness: Write a poem or journal entry inspired by what you can't see.

59. Refreshed: Write a poem about a time you really felt refreshed and renewed. Maybe it was a dip into a pool on a hot summer day, a drink of lemonade, or other situation that helped you relax and start again.

60. Handle With Care: Write about a very fragile or delicate object.

61. Drama: Write about a time when you got stuck in between two parties fighting with each other.

62. Slip Up: Write about making mistakes.

63. Spice: Write about flavors and tastes or a favorite spice of yours.

64. Sing a New Song: Take a popular song off the radio and rewrite it as a poem in your own words.

65. Telephone: Write about a phone call you recently received.

66. Name: Write a poem or short story using your name in some way or form.

67. Dollhouse: Write a poem or short story from the viewpoint of someone living in a doll house.

68. Random Wikipedia Article: Go to Wikipedia and click on Random Article. Write about whatever the page you get.

69. Silly Sports: Write about an extreme or silly sport. If none inspire you, make up the rules for your own game.

70. Recipe: Write about a recipe for something abstract, such as a feeling.

71. Famous Artwork: Choose a famous painting and write about it.

72. Where That Place Used to Be: Think of a place you went to when you were younger but it now no longer there or is something else. Capture your feelings about this in your writing.

73. Last Person You Talked to: Write a quick little poem or story about the last person you spoke with.

74. Caught Red-Handed: Write about being caught doing something embarrassing.

75. Interview: Write a list of questions you have for someone you would like to interview, real or fictional.

76. Missing You: Write about someone you miss dearly.

77. Geography: Pick a state or country you've never visited. Write about why you would or would not like to visit that place.

78. Random Song: Turn on the radio, use the shuffle feature on your music collection or your favorite streaming music service. Write something inspired by the first song you hear.

79. Hero: Write a tribute to someone you regard as a hero.

80. Ode to Strangers: Go people watching and write an ode to a stranger you see on the street.

81. Advertisement: Advertisements are everywhere, aren't they? Write using the slogan or line from an ad.

82. Book Inspired: Think of your favorite book. Now write a poem that sums up the entire story in 10 lines.

83. Magic: Imagine you have a touch of magic, and can make impossible things happen. What would you do?

84. Fanciest Pen: Get out your favorite pen, pencils, or even colored markers and write using them!

85. A Day in the Life: Write about your daily habits and routine.

86. Your Muse: Write about your muse - what do they look like? What does your muse do to inspire you?

87. Convenience Store: Write about an experience you've had at a gas station or convenience store.

88. Natural Wonders of the World: Choose one of the natural wonders of the world. Write about it.

89. Status Update: Write a poem using the words from your latest status update or a friend's status update. If you don't use sites like Facebook or Twitter, you can often search online for some funny ones to use as inspiration.

90. Green Thumb: Write about growing something.

91. Family Heirloom: Write about an object that's been passed through the generations in your family.

92. Bug Catcher: Write about insects.

93. Potion: Write about a magic potion. What is it made of? What does it do? What is the antidote?

94. Swinging & Sliding: Write something inspired by a playground or treehouse.

95. Adjectives: Make a list of the first 5 adjectives that pop into your head. Use these 5 words in your story, poem, or journal entry.

96. Fairy Tales: Rewrite a fairy tale. Give it a new ending or make it modern or write as a poem.

97. Whispers: Write about someone who has to whisper a secret to someone else.

98. Smile: Write a poem about the things that make you smile.

99. Seasonal: Write about your favorite season.

100. Normal: What does normal mean to you? Is it good or bad to be normal?

101. Recycle: Take something you've written in the past and rewrite it into a completely different piece.

102. Wardrobe: Write about a fashion model or what's currently in your closet or drawers.

103. Secret Message: Write something with a secret message hidden in between the words. For example, you could make an acrostic poem using the last letters of the word or use secret code words in the poem.

104. Vacation: Write about a vacation you took.

105. Heat: Write about being overheated and sweltering.

106. Spellbinding: Write a magic spell.

107. Collection: Write about collecting something, such as salt shakers, sea shells, or stamps.

108. Taking Chances: Everyone takes a risk at some point in their life. Write about a time when you took a chance and what the result was.

109. Carnival: Write a poem or story or journal entry inspired by a carnival or street fair.

110. Country Mouse: Write about someone who grew up in the country visiting the city for the first time.

111: Questions: Write about questions you have for the universe. Optional: include an answer key.

112. Rushing: Write about moving quickly and doing things fast.

113. Staircase: Use a photo of a staircase or the stairs in your home or a building you love to inspire you.

114. Neighbors: Make up a story or poem about your next door neighbor.

115. Black and Blue: Write about a time you've been physically hurt.

116. All Saints: Choose a saint and create a poem about his or her life.

117. Beach Inspired: What's not to write about the beach?

118. Shoes: What kind of shoes do you wear? Where do they lead your feet?

119. The Ex: Write a poem to someone who is estranged from you.

120. My Point of View: Write in the first person point of view.

121. Stray Animal: Think of the life of a stray cat or dog and write about that.

122. Stop and Stare: Create a poem or story about something you could watch forever.

123. Your Bed: Describe where you sleep each night.

124. Fireworks: Do they inspire you or do you not like the noise and commotion? Write about it.

125. Frozen: Write about a moment in your life you wish you could freeze and preserve.

126. Alone: Do you like to be alone or do you like having company?

127. Know-it-all: Write about something you are very knowledgeable about, for example a favorite hobby or passion of yours.

128. The Promise: Write about a promise you've made to someone. Did you keep that promise?

129. Commotion: Write about being overstimulated by a lot of chaos.

130. Read the News Today: Construct a poem or story using a news headline for your first line.

131. Macro: Write a description of an object close-up.

132. Transportation: Write about taking your favorite (or least-favorite) form of transportation.

133. Gadgets: If you could invent a gadget, what would it do? Are there any gadgets that make your life easier?

134: Bring on the Cheese: Write a tacky love poem that is so cheesy, it belongs on top of a pizza.

135. Ladders: Write a story or poem that uses ladders as a symbol.

136. Bizarre Holiday: There is a bizarre holiday for any date! Look up a holiday for today's date and create a poem in greeting card fashion or write a short story about the holiday to celebrate.

137. Blog-o-sphere: Visit your favorite blog or your feedreader and craft a story, journal entry, or poem based on the latest blog post you read.

138. Mailbox: Create a poem, short story, or journal entry based on a recent item of mail you've received.

139. Sharing: Write about sharing something with someone else.

140. Cactus: Write from the viewpoint of a cactus. What's it like to live in the desert or have a prickly personality?

141. It's a Sign: Have you seen any interesting road signs lately?

142. Furniture: Write about a piece of furniture in your home.

143. Failure: Write about a time you failed at something. Did you try again or give up completely?

144. Mystical Creatures: Angels or other mystical creatures - use them as inspiration.

145. Flying: Write about having wings and what you would do.

146. Clear and Transparent: Write a poem about being able to see-through something.

147. Break the Silence: Record yourself speaking, then write down what you spoke and revise into a short story or poem.

148. Beat: Listen to music with a strong rhythm or listen to drum loops. Write something that goes along with the beat you feel and hear.

149. Color Palette: Search online for color palettes and be inspired to write by one you resonate with.

150. Magazine: Randomly flip to a page in a magazine and write using the first few words you see as an opening line.

151. The Grass is Greener: Write about switching the place with someone or going to where it seems the "grass is greener".

152. Mind & Body: Write something that would motivate others to workout and exercise.

153. Shaping Up: Write something that makes a shape on the page...ie: a circle, a heart, a square, etc.

154. Twenty-One: Write about your 21st birthday.

155. Aromatherapy: Write about scents you just absolutely love.

156. Swish, Buzz, Pop: Create a poem that uses Onomatopoeia.

157. What Time is It? Write about the time of day it is right now. What are people doing? What do you usually do at this time each day?

158. Party Animal: Have you ever gone to a party you didn't want to leave? Or do you hate parties? Write about it!

159: Miss Manners: Use the words "please" and "thank you" in your writing.

160. Cliche: Choose a common cliche, then write something that says the same thing but without using the catch phrase.

161. Eco-friendly: Write about going green or an environmental concern you have.

162. Missing You: Write about someone you miss.

163. Set it Free: Think of a time when you had to let someone or something go to be free...did they come back?

164: Left Out: Write about a time when you've felt left out or you've noticed someone else feeling as if they didn't belong.

165. Suitcase: Write about packing for a trip or unpacking from when you arrive home.

166. Fantasy: Write about fairies, gnomes, elves, or other mythical creatures.

167. Give and Receive: Write about giving and receiving.

168. Baker's Dozen: Imagine the scents and sights of a bakery and write.

169. Treehouse: Write about your own secret treehouse hideaway.

170. Risk: Write about taking a gamble on something.

171. Acrostic: Choose a word and write an acrostic poem where every line starts with a letter from the word.

172. Crossword Puzzle: Open up the newspaper or find a crossword puzzle online and choose one of the clues to use as inspiration for your writing.

173. Silver Lining: Write about the good that happens in a bad situation.

174. Gloves: Write about a pair of gloves - what kind of gloves are they? Who wears them and why?

175. All that Glitters: Write about a shiny object.

176. Jealousy: Write with a theme of envy and jealousy.

177. How Does Your Garden Grow? Write about a flower that grows in an unusual place.

178. Jury Duty: Write a short story or poem that takes place in a courtroom.

179. Gifts: Write about a gift you have given or received.

180. Running: Write about running away from someone or something.

181. Discovery: Think of something you've recently discovered and use it as inspiration.

182. Complain: Write about your complaints about something.

183. Gratitude: Write a poem or journal entry that is all about things you are thankful for.

184. Chemistry: Choose an element and write a poem or story that uses that word in one of the lines.

185. Applause: Write about giving someone a standing ovation.

186. Old Endings Into New Beginnings: Take an old poem, story, or journal entry of yours and use the last line and make it the first line of your writing today.

187. Longing: Write about something you very much want to do.

188. I Am: Write a motivational poem or journal entry about positive traits that make you who you are.

189. Rainbow: What is at the end of a rainbow? Or, take a cue from Kermit the Frog, and ask yourself, why are there so many songs about rainbows?

190. Museum: Take some time to visit a nearby museum with your journal. Write about one of the pieces that speaks to you.

191. Cartoon: Think of your favorite cartoon or comic. Write a poem or story that takes place in that setting.

192. Copycat: Borrow a line from a famous public domain poem to craft your own.

193. From the Roof-tops: Imagine you could stand on a rooftop and broadcast a message to everyone below - what would you say?

194. Time Travel: If there was a time period you could visit for a day, where would you go? Write about traveling back in time to that day.

195. Changing Places: Imagine living the day as someone else.

196. Neighborhood: Write about your favorite place in your neighborhood to visit and hang out at.

197. Pirates: Write about a pirate ship.

198. Interview: Write based on a recent interview you've read or seen on TV or heard on the radio.

199. Hiding Spaces: Write about places you like to hide things at. What was a favorite hiding spot for you as a child playing hide-and-seek?

200. Extreme Makeover: Imagine how life might be different if you could change your hair color or clothing into something completely opposite from your current style.

201. Empathy: Write about your feelings of empathy or compassion for another person.

202. Opposites: Write a poem or story that ties in together two opposites.

203. Boredom: Write about being bored or make a list of different ways to entertain yourself.

204. Strength: Think of a time when you've been physically or emotionally strong and use that as inspiration.

205. Hunger: Write from the perspective of someone with no money to buy food.

206. Greed: Write about someone who always wants more - whether it be money, power, etc. etc.

207. Volcano: Write about an eruption of a volcano.

208. Video Inspiration: Go to Vimeo.com or YouTube.com and watch one of the videos featured on the homepage. Write something based on what you watch.

209. Sneeze: Write about things that make you sneeze.

210. Footsteps on the Moon: Write about the possibility of life in outer-space.

211: Star-crossed: Write a short modern version of the story of Romeo and Juliet or think of real-life examples of lovers who are not allowed to be together to use as inspiration for your writing.

212. Font-tastic: Choose a unique font and type out a poem, story or journal entry using that font.

213. Schedule: Take a look at your calendar and use the schedule for inspiration in writing.

214. Grandparents: Write about a moment in your grandparent's life.

215. Collage: Go through a magazine and cut out words that grab your attention. Use these words to construct a poem or as a story starter or inspiration for your journal.

216. Oh so Lonely: Write a poem about what you do when you are alone - do you feel lonely or do you enjoy your own company?

217. Waterfall: Think of a waterfall you've seen in person or spend some time browsing photos of waterfalls online. Write about the movement, flow, and energy.

218. First Kiss: Write about your first kiss.

219. So Ironic: Write about an ironic situation you've been in throughout your life.

220. Limerick: Write a limerick today.

221. Grocery Shopping: Write about an experience at the grocery store.

222. Fashion: Go through a fashion magazine or browse fashion websites online and write about a style you love.

223. So Close: Write about coming close to reaching a goal.

224. Drinks on Me: Write a poem or short story that takes place at a bar.

225. Online Friends: Write an ode to someone online you've met and become friends with.

226. Admiration: Is there someone you admire? Write about those feelings.

227. Trash Day: Write from the perspective of a garbage collector.

228. Mailbox: Open your mailbox and write something inspired by one of the pieces of mail you received.

229. Fresh & Clean: Write about how you feel after you take a shower.

230. Energized: Write about how you feel when you're either at a high or low energy level for the day.

231. Rhyme & No Reason: Make up a silly rhyming poem using made up words.

232. Tech Support: Use computers or a conversation with tech support you've had as inspiration.

233. Hotel: Write from the perspective of someone who works at a hotel or staying at a hotel.

234. Underwater: Write about sea creatures and under water life. What's under the surface of the ocean? What adventures might be waiting?

235. Breathing: Take a few minutes to do some deep breathing relaxation techniques. Once your mind is clear, just write the first few things that you think of.

236. Liar, Liar: Make up a poem or story of complete lies about yourself or someone else.

237. Obituaries: Look at the recent obituaries online or in the newspaper and imagine the life of someone and write about that person.

238. Pocket: Rummage through your pockets and write about what you keep or find in your pockets.

239. Cinquain: Write a cinquain poem, which consists of 5 lines that do not rhyme.

240. Alphabetical: Write a poem that has every letter of the alphabet in it.

241. Comedy Club: Write something inspired by a comedian.

242. Cheater: Write about someone who is unfaithful.

243. Sestina: Give a try to writing a sestina poem.

244. Fight: Write about witnessing two people get in an argument with each other.

245. Social Network: Visit your favorite Social Networking website (ie: Facebook, Pinterest, Google, Twitter, etc.) and write a about a post you see there.

246. Peaceful: Write about something peaceful and serene.

247. In the Clouds: Go cloud watching for the day and write about what you imagine in the clouds.

248. At the Park: Take some time to sit on a park bench and write about the sights, scenes, and senses and emotions you experience.

249. Sonnet: Write a sonnet today.

250. Should, Would, And Could: Write a poem or story using the words should, would, and could.

251. How to: Write directions on how to do something.

252. Alliteration: Use alliteration in your poem or in a sentence in a story.

253. Poker Face: Write about playing a card game.

254. Timer: Set a timer for 5 minutes and just write. Don't worry about it making sense or being perfect.

255. Dance: Write about a dancer or a time you remember dancing.

256. Write for a Cause: Write a poem or essay that raises awareness for a cause you support.

257. Magic: Write about a magician or magic trick.

258. Out of the Box: Imagine finding a box. Write about opening it and what's inside.

259. Under the Influence: What is something has impacted you positively in your life?

260. Forgotten Toy: Write from the perspective a forgotten or lost toy.

261. Rocks and Gems: Write about a rock or gemstone meaning.

262. Remote Control: Imagine you can fast forward and rewind your life with a remote control.

263. Symbolism: Think of objects, animals, etc. that have symbolic meaning to you. Write about it.

264. Light at the End of the Tunnel: Write about a time when you saw hope when it seemed like a hopeless situation.

265. Smoke and Fire: "Where there's smoke, there's fire." Use this saying as inspiration to write!

266. Railroad: Write about a train and its cargo or passengers.

267. Clipboard: Write about words you imagine on an office clipboard.

268. Shipwrecked: Write about being stranded somewhere - an island, a bus stop, etc.

269. Quotable: Use a popular quote from a speaker and use it as inspiration for your writing.

270. Mind Map it Out: Create a mind map of words, phrases, and ideas that pop into your head or spend some time browsing the many mind maps online. Write a poem, story, or journal entry inspired by the mind map.

271. Patterns: Write about repeating patterns that occur in life.

272. Scrapbook: Write about finding a scrapbook and the memories it contains.

273. Cure: Write about finding a cure for an illness.

274. Email Subject Lines: Read your email today and look for subject lines that may be good starters for writing inspiration.

275. Wishful Thinking: Write about a wish you have.

276. Doodle: Spend some time today doodling for about 5-10 minutes. Write about the thoughts you had while doodling or create something inspired by your finished doodle.

277. Chalkboard: Imagine you are in a classroom. What does it say on the chalkboard?

278. Sticky: Imagine a situation that's very sticky, maybe even covered in maple syrup, tape or glue. Write about it!

279. Flashlight: Imagine going somewhere very dark with only a flashlight to guide you.

280. A Far Away Place: Envision yourself traveling to a fictional place, what do you experience in your imaginary journey?

281. On the Farm: Write about being in a country or rural setting.

282. Promise to Yourself: Write about a promise you want to make to yourself and keep.

283. Brick Wall: Write a poem that is about a brick wall - whether literal or figurative.

284. Making a Choice: Write about a time when you had to make a difficult choice.

285. Repeat: Write about a time when you've had to repeat yourself or a time when it felt like no one was listening.

286. Outcast: Write about someone who is not accepted by their peers. (for example, the Ugly Ducking)

287. Scary Monsters: Write about a scary (or not-so-scary) monster in your closet or under the bed.

288. Sacrifice: Write about something you've sacrificed doing to do something else or help another person.

289. Imperfection: Create a poem that highlights the beauty in being flawed.

290. Birthday Poem: Write a poem inspired by birthdays.

291. Title First: Make a list of potential poem or story titles and choose one to write from.

292. Job Interview: Write about going on a job interview.

293. Get Well: Write a poem that will help someone who is sick feel better quick!

294. Lost in the Crowd: Write about feeling lost in the crowd.

295. Apple a Day: Write about a health topic that interests you.

296. Cravings: Write about craving something.

297. Phobia: Research some common phobias, choose one, and write about it.

298. In the Moment: Write about living in the present moment.

299. Concrete: Write about walking down a sidewalk and what you see and experience.

300. Battle: Write about an epic battle, whether real, fictional or figurative.

301. This Old House: Write about an old house that is abandoned or being renovated.

302. Clutter: Is there a cluttered spot in your home? Go through some of that clutter today and write about what you find or the process of organizing.

303. Go Fly a Kite: Write about flying a kite.

304. On the TV: Flip to a random TV channel and write about the first thing that comes on - even if it is an infomercial!

305. Fruit: Write an ode to your favorite fruit.

306. Long Distance Love: Write about a couple that is separated by distance.

307. Glasses: Write about a pair of eyeglasses or someone wearing glasses.

308. Robotic: Write about a robot.

309. Cute as a Button: Write about something you think is just adorable.

310. Movie Conversation: Use a memorable conversation from a favorite movie to inspire your writing.

311. Easy-Peasy: Write about doing something effortlessly.

312. Idiom: Choose from a list of idioms one that speaks to you and create a poem around that saying or phrase. (Ie: It is raining cats and dogs)

313. Playground: Whether it is the swings or the sandbox or the sliding boards, write about your memories of being on a playground.

314. Romance: Write about romantic things partners can do for each other.

315. Rock Star: Imagine you are a famous rock star. Write about the experience.

316. Come to Life: Imagine ordinary objects have come to life. Write about what they do and say.

317. Airplane: Write about meeting someone on an airplane and a conversation you might have.

318. Health & Beauty: Take some time to peruse your medicine cabinet or the health and beauty aisles at a local store. Write a poem, short story, or journal entry inspired by a product label.

319. Determination: Write about not giving up.

320. Instrumental Inspiration: Listen to some instrumental music and write a poem that matches the mood, beat, and style of the music.

321. Wait Your Turn: Write about having to wait in line.

322. Personality Type: Do you know your personality type? (There are many free quizzes online) - write about what type of personality traits you have.

323. Decade: Choose a favorite decade and write about it. (IE: 1980's or 1950's for example)

324. I Believe: Write your personal credo of things you believe in.

325. Lost and Found: Write about a lost object.

326. Say it: Write a poem or story that uses dialogue between two people.

327. The Unsent Letter: Write about a letter that never made it to its recipient.

328. The Windows of the Soul: Write a poem about the story that is told through someone's eyes.

329. Trial and Error: Write about something you learned the hard way.

330. Escape: Write about where you like to go to escape from it all.

331. What's Cooking: Write something inspired a favorite food or recipe.

332. Records: Go through your file box and pull out old receipts or records...write something inspired by what you find!

333. Banking: Write about visiting the bank.

334. Sweet Talk: Write about trying to convince someone of something.

335. Serendipity: Write about something that happened by chance in a positive way.

336. Distractions: Write about how it feels when you can't focus.

337. Corporation: Write about big business.

338. Word of the Day: Go to a dictionary website that has a word of the day and use it in a poem, story or journal entry you write.

339. Pick Me Up: What do you do when you need a pick me up?

340. Unfinished: Write about a project you started but never completed.

341. Forgiveness: Write about a time when someone forgave you or you forgave someone.

342. Weakness: Write about your greatest weakness.

343. Starting: Write about starting a project.

344. Mechanical: Think of gears, moving parts, machines.

345. Random Act of Kindness: Write about a random act of kindness you've done for someone or someone has done for you, no matter how small or insignificant it may have seemed.

346. Underground: Imagine living in a home underground and use that as inspiration for writing.

347. Classic Rock: Pick a classic rock love ballad and rewrite it into a story or poem with a similar theme.

348. Night Owl: Write about staying up late at night.

349. Magnetic: Write about attraction to something or someone.

350. Teamwork: Write about working with a team towards a common goal.

351. Roller-coaster: Write about the ups and downs in life.

352. Motivational Poster: Look at some motivational posters online and write a poem or journal entry inspired by your favorite one.

353. Games: Write about the games people play - figuratively or literally.

354. Turning Point: Write about a point in life where things turned for the better or worse.

355. Spellbound: Write about a witch's spell.

356. Anniversary: Write about the anniversary of a special date.

357. Gamble: Be inspired by a casino or lottery ticket.

358. Picnic: Write about going on a picnic.

359. Garage: Write about some random item you might find in a garage.

360. Review: Review your week, month, or year in a journal entry or poem format.

361. Detective: Write about a detective searching for clues or solving a mystery.

362. Camera: Take your camera for a walk and write based on one of the photographs you take.

363. Visiting: Write about visiting a family member or friend.

364. Trust: Write about putting trust in someone.

365. Congratulations: Did you write a poem, short story, or journal entry every day for a whole year? Write about what you've learned and celebrate your achievement!

We hope you enjoy these creative writing prompts! And of course, if you write anything using these prompts, we'd love to know about it! Tell us how you'll use these everyday creative writing prompts in the comments section below!

And of course, if you'd like the printable ad-free version of these prompts to reference again and again or to use in your classroom, you can find them at our Etsy shop!

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Here are 365 Creative Writing Prompts to help inspire you to write every single day! Use them for journaling, story starters, poems and more!

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The 500 Words initiative was created by Chris Evans and first launched in 2011, celebrating its 10thanniversary in June this year and boasting an extraordinary legacy with over one million entries submitted to date. The most recent competition was turned around in less than four weeks with the backing of Virgin Radio, many of the UK's leading publishing houses, Amazon Alexa, and WHSmith, alongside a whole host of celebrities from the worlds of entertainment, sport, music and more.

With ongoing support from Oxford University Press, The Reading Agency, Parents and Teachers, the future of 500 Words is bright, and we look forward to setting a new theme for the competition in 2021. We are excited to continue to provide a creative platform to hear children's voices.

Make sure you look out for the new edition of the competition, announced in Spring 2021.

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The 500 Words initiative was created by Chris Evans and first launched in 2011, celebrating its 10thanniversary in June this year and boasting an extraordinary legacy with over one million entries submitted to date.

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The French Academy normalizes the use of the French language. What are its counterparts in other countries? Language academies in Italy, Holland, Spain.
The Académie française, the Real Academia Española, the Accademia della Crusca... and another 120 or so more language academies act as authorities whose word is law, whether it's for sworn translations, technical translations or indeed for any other use of the language.

The language academies, these 'Language Police' are the authorities responsible for determining what is right and what is not in the use of language. But not all of them have the same origin, the same mission or even the same function. Some languages are perfectly able to survive without a body such as these. Let's take a brief look at the subject...

The oldest language academy still in operation is Accademia della Crusca founded in 1582 in Florence. When it was founded, its original objective was to create an official language for the country. Of all the dialects spoken in the boot-shaped peninsula at the time, Tuscan was chosen because of its similarity to Latin and its 'purity'. However it was only after the unification of Italy in 1861 that its use became widespread.

The Académie Française, known in English as the French Academy, was founded in 1635 by Richelieu. Now what could be its mission? According French Academy's website, its objective was " to wisely and economically build a language different from that of specialists, scholars and corporations, with the clarity and elegance attributed to Latin, which made no disctinction between the language in its written or spoken forms, and which would eventually draw its strength from both its use and the standards it set."

If the French Academy opted, throughout its history, to play a more regulatory role, the Real Academia Española, known in English as the Royal Spanish Academy, is distinguished by a more open attitude to change and linguistic development. Is this because of the influence exerted by the sheer diversity of the Spanish language as spoken by about half a billion people? The Spanish Royal Academy was founded in the eighteenth century in response to the arrival on the scene of its French counterpart, and assumes this difference, stating that it aims to watch over the "good use and unity of a language in constant evolution and expansion." The RAE works in collaboration with another 21 Spanish language academies, within the framework of the Association of Spanish Language Academies.

If the Accademia della Crusca, the Académie Française and the Real Academia Española are legacies of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the Nederlandse Taalunie is a purely contemporary product. This institution was only founded in 1980 in The Netherlands. Its mission is defined by an international treaty, signed later by the other countries where Dutch is spoken, such as Belgian Flanders, Surinam and the islands of St. Martin, Aruba and Curacao. The treaty and the academy itself strive to produce common policies to unify the language.

There are, however, many languages that are not governed by language academies:of the 7000 languages spoken in the world, only 122 (according to Wikipedia) have their own language police:

English is probably the most best-known example of a "free" language. All attempts to create an English language academy were rejected in the interests of freedom of expression.

Cantonese, spoken in southern China, is a language which evolves very quickly in lexical terms, so much so that this is said to cause difficulties of understanding between generations.

Discover our translation agency.

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The French Academy normalizes the use of the French language. What are its counterparts in other countries? Language academies in Italy, Holland, Spain. The Académie française, the Real Academia Española, the Accademia della Crusca... and another 120 or so more language academies act as authorities whose word is law, whether it's for sworn translations, technical translations or indeed for any other use of the language.

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"Does Generation Z know how to email properly?"

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"Does Generation Z know how to email properly?"

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his week, Prof Brittney Cooper from Rutgers University caused a small internet storm when she asked a simple question: "Why don't modern college kids know how to send a formal letter/email?" She added that her students frequently email her simply saying "Hello."

Why don't modern college kids know how to send a formal letter/email? I thought everyone knew to begin Dear Prof. X or Dear Dr. X. Instead these kids stay emailing me Hello There! Or Hello (no name): Why are they like this?
- Brittney Cooper (@ProfessorCrunk) January 12, 2021

Needless to say, dear reader, a pile-on ensued, rife with accusations of classism and elitism. Some snot-nosed kids even responded to Cooper's tweet using the "I pay you to answer my emails" defense - which did little to prove their decorum.

But do young people these days know how to send an email? Were things really that much better in the heyday when we all sat down in class and learned the difference between "yours faithfully" and "sincerely"?

I decided to investigate, starting with my own college emails.

My own emails

While I grew up with the internet (I went to school when Snake was the best game on a phone and polyphonic ringtones were hip) our teachers still believed, at that time, in teaching us formal letter-writing skills. I decided to see whether I extended these skills to my own email decorum at college. The first email I find is from 2012:

Subject: no subject

Hey [Professor's first name],

Greetings from Slovenia! I have been on holiday and during that time my hermes has been purged so anything you've sent me i havent gotten.

Here I start with "hey", I don't capitalize or use punctuation properly, and use the word "gotten", which is not really a word - these all land me minus marks. On the other hand, I used the word greetings, which sounds regal. 1/10.

In 2011, in a chain to a professor where I seem to be "totally freaking out!!" over an exam question about whether the brain supports social behavior (I was a psych major), I write:

Subject: No subject

On Jun 1 2011, P.B. Noor wrote:

"What do they mean claim? Of COURSE the brain supports social behaviour?! It supports everything! Is there anyone who claims that it doesn't? I don't understand what the question wants from me aaaaaaaaaah too much cortisol too much

And then:

On Jun 1 2011, P.B. Noor wrote:

...Ok ok chilling out chilling out. Do u think I would be completely nuts if i posited that cognition can be both conscious AND unconscious?"

Despite knowing where to place the heading and address on a handwritten letter, I did not understand the difference between an email and a random stream of consciousness.

In another email to the same professor, I wrote:

"Would it be okay if i send u a cheeky plan to look at? Pleeeeeeeease?"

Etiquette ranking: -1/10. I would go so far as to say these emails were insulting.

Email etiquette for the youth of today

Being 30, I do not represent the youth of today, so I supplemented my investigation browsing online forums for students. In a sub-group called " advice on everyday issues" on The Student Room, I start to see why some students might ruffle a few feathers. One asks if he should copy and paste the exact same email to his professor after not hearing back for a few days. Some suggest emailing teachers for documents repeatedly until they either respond or block the student if they haven't received a reply. One student frets so much about how to respond to an email that it gives me high blood pressure (I don't think I can just say "hi, I'm doing fine thanks" but what else is there to say? ... I'm torn between 'too anxious to send an email' and 'also anxious that the teacher will confront me for not sending one'"). Assessment: Hun, chill.

But that these students care enough about the tone of their emails to post in a forum makes me think that no, they don't know how to send an email, but yes, they deserve some points.

Etiquette ranking: 5/10.

A professor's view

Next, I decided to see what professors thought and luckily, there's a research paper on that - discussing the bad manners student emails entail.

In it, we have the Too Much Information (TMI) email, in which a student sends "the most detailed intimate portrait of their lives to justify their request" (" I am home today with a migraine headache, a sore throat, congestion, a cough, and a little bit of a fever. I have been drinking a lot of orange juice and take cold medicine ... I might be getting the flu... Can I make up the test tomorrow?");the If I Had a Time Machine email (" For some reason I didn't know we had outside activities to do in this class nor did I realize that there were online quizzes to take. Can you please fill me in on what I need to do? I am lost."); and the We Only Learn When I Am There email: (" I accidentally slept through all of my classes today, I was just emailing you to make sure I didn't miss anything important.")

The act of naming each of these forms of email and writing a paper about it appears to me to be the worst form of public snitching and passive aggressiveness, so here I will rank the teachers on their manners.

Humor: 7/10.

Etiquette: 1/10 (they get one point for effort).

Soon after, I discover that there is a wiki page on how to write an email to your teacher and I start to lose the will to live.

The definitive answer

Do young people even know how to send an email? The definitive answer is threefold:

1. No, clearly students don't know how to write an email.

2. Some teachers are petty as hell. Including one, who responded to Cooper's thread with this barnstormer (now made private): "I used to do this thing where I would walk into class, throw student papers in the air, and walk out. Give them a moment to be like wtf just happened. Then I'd come back in and say 'this is what it's like when you email me without a salutation, explanation, or subject line.'"

3. There is also a much bigger takeaway here, with specific regard to the storm that Cooper was subject to. I asked a mutual friend about his experience teaching:

"As a PhD student, I'm constantly reminding students that I neither want nor need to be addressed as 'Professor' or 'Dr' in emails. Of course I understand that it's a different question when it comes to, particularly, senior women of color who feel disrespected by the adoption of a sort of unearned familiarity. I'm a white guy who wears glasses and teaches at an Ivy League college, which I'm sure does play a role in the fact that they jump right in with titles and honorifics, even ones that I don't have yet."

So maybe young people do know how to write an email after all, it just depends who they are sending it to. Let us know your own thoughts and experiences, below.

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Does Generation Z know how to email properly? An investigation

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his week, Prof Brittney Cooper from Rutgers University caused a small internet storm when she asked a simple question: "Why don't modern college kids know how to send a formal letter/email?" She added that her students frequently email her simply saying "Hello." Needless to say, dear reader, a pile-on ensued, rife with accusations of classism and elitism.

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A while ago, the people at Grammarly asked us a question: has the Internet changed the pace at which new words enter the dictionary? Do we enter new words more quickly now? The answer was so interesting that we ended up writing a series of articles on slang in the dictionary. Today, we'll begin with the obvious: How does any word get into the dictionary? Next, we'll look at the earliest dictionaries to include slang, and our third installment will focus specifically on the Internet and the dictionary.
Click here to see the infographic that accompanies this story.
Dictionaries have always been data-driven. A dictionary isn't an idea museum, it's a user's manual for communication.
So how does a word get into the dictionary?
A word gets into a dictionary when it is used by many people who all agree that it means the same thing. If your toddler nephew invented a great word that the English language simply can't do without, don't write to us to recommend that it be added to the dictionary. Use it. First, you drop the word into your conversation and writing, then others pick it up; the more its use spreads, the more likely it will be noticed by dictionary editors, or lexicographers. If your nephew's word is one that English speakers decide we need, it has a good chance of getting into the dictionary.
This is what dictionary editors do all day
Dictionary editors read actively, looking for changes in the language. To find vocabulary that has entered mainstream life-terms like bucket list or sexting or unfriend, we look at sites and publications with wide national readership. For words that begin as specialized vocabulary but might become more common over time, we look at medical, industry, and tech journals for words like obesogenic and fracking. Captions for comic strips have lots of words that are more frequently spoken than written. It all adds up.
We collect citations of new words
Each example of a word becomes a citation that is collected with its context and source and then keyed into a searchable database that constitutes the first stage of research for the dictionary. These hand-chosen examples form a unique corpus that is the raw form of the dictionary-they provide both the evidence of a word's use and the basis for extracting a definition from the way the word is used in the citation. We collect new words as well as new ways of using old words, which can be much harder to detect. We have nearly 17 million such citations.
Next, we research how widely a new word is used
We search through other databases that include millions of words in the form of complete articles, books, and speech. We're looking for three criteria: frequent use, widespread use, and meaningful use. Frequent means that the word is used that way over time. If it's a trendy flash in the pan that comes and goes, we don't enter it into the dictionary. Widespread usually means that the word is used by people across industries or regions, in other words that an average adult is likely to encounter the word and need to know what it means. Meaningful should be obvious, but it isn't, always. Famously, the "longest word in the dictionary" isn't actually a word by these standards, because it's never used to mean what it seems to describe. It's only used as an example of a very long word. It's not in our dictionary.

The definer must judge whether there is enough evidence to put a new word in; that judgment will be reviewed by more senior colleagues as the dictionary moves through the editorial process, but there's no committee, no advocacy, no meetings for new word inclusion. If a word seems promising but shows insufficient evidence for inclusion this time around, those citations will be reviewed for the next edition, at which time the word may have flourished-or vanished.
Some "new" words are already in the dictionary
New words like hashtag and selfie get a lot of attention, but many of the new words we add are new meanings of words that are already staples in our language: think of the recent meanings of mouse and cookie that have nothing to do with rodents or baked goods. The Internet-specific senses of lurk and browse built upon the existing meanings of those terms. A verb that we use every day, access, was first entered in the Collegiate Dictionary in 1973, and a specific reference to computers was added in 1993. These words may not make headlines, but they're just as important as words that are newly coined.
What about words that don't make it into the dictionary?
They're still real words! Many words that aren't widespread enough to make it into the dictionary-words that are particular to a region or profession or even a family-are perfectly good words; it's just unlikely that a person outside that area or group would encounter them. For now.
Next: Slang and the Dictionary Need to check how you're using new words? Try Grammarly (it's free).

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A while ago, the people at Grammarly asked us a question: has the Internet changed the pace at which new words enter the dictionary? Do we enter new words more quickly now? The answer was so interesting that we ended up writing a series of articles on slang in the dictionary.

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Learning how to be a writer can be daunting, because 'writing' is not one job. It's dozens. It's characters, and world-building, and plot, and pacing, and dialogue, and action, and description, and editing, and the thought of mastering those all at the same time can be really intimidating. I've taught hundreds of writing classes and I meet a lot of young people who just don't know where to start.

But the thing to remember is that nobody starts off writing full novels, or great masterpieces. There are a million tiny steps between your first story and your greatest masterpiece, and for me, the first step was fan fiction.

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Learning how to be a writer can be daunting, because 'writing' is not one job. It's dozens. It's characters, and world-building, and plot, and pacing, and dialogue, and action, and description, and editing, and the thought of mastering those all at the same time can be really intimidating.

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I love being scared.

Not actual scared - the kind of scared you get from spiders or dentists - but book-scared. Because book-scared is safe-scared. It's scared with the safety on, with the guard rail down, the kind of scared you can use as a mirror to learn more about yourself. I made my villains in Knights of the Borrowed Dark shapeshifters, so every new monster is like a brand-new horror film in miniature, and I can let my imagination run wild.

If you're a horror or fantasy writer in training, here are some steps you can follow to create your very own pet nightmares.

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How to write an utterly terrifying horror story

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I love being scared. Not actual scared - the kind of scared you get from spiders or dentists - but book-scared. Because book-scared is safe-scared. It's scared with the safety on, with the guard rail down, the kind of scared you can use as a mirror to learn more about yourself.

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Documents 800 inconsistencies of English!

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Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,

I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse

I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye your dress you'll tear,
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,

Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

Just compare heart, beard and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written).

Made has not the sound of bade,
Say said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,

But be careful how you speak,
Say break, steak, but bleak and streak.

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via,
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,

Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles.
Exiles, similes, reviles.

Wholly, holly, signal, signing.
Thames, examining, combining

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war, and far.

From "desire": desirable--admirable from "admire."
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier.

Chatham, brougham, renown, but known.
Knowledge, done, but gone and tone,

One, anemone. Balmoral.
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel,

Gertrude, German, wind, and mind.
Scene, Melpomene, mankind,

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, reading, heathen, heather.

This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;

Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.

Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which is said to rime with "darky."

Viscous, Viscount, load, and broad.
Toward, to forward, to reward.

And your pronunciation's O.K.,
When you say correctly: croquet.

Rounded, wounded, grieve, and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive, and live,

Liberty, library, heave, and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven,

We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.

Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover,

Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police, and lice.

Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label,

Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal.

Suit, suite, ruin, circuit, conduit,
Rime with "shirk it" and "beyond it."

But it is not hard to tell,
Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,

Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, and chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor,

Ivy, privy, famous, clamour
And enamour rime with hammer.

Pussy, hussy, and possess,
Desert, but dessert, address.

Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants.
Hoist, in lieu of flags, left pennants.

River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.

Stranger does not rime with anger.
Neither does devour with clangour.

Soul, but foul and gaunt but aunt.
Font, front, won't, want, grand, and grant.

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger.
And then: singer, ginger, linger,

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.

Query does not rime with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.

Dost, lost, post; and doth, cloth, loth;
Job, Job; blossom, bosom, oath.

Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual.

Seat, sweat; chaste, caste.; Leigh, eight, height;
Put, nut; granite, and unite.

Reefer does not rime with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.

Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, Senate, but sedate.

Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific,

Tour, but our and succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria,

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion.

Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay.

Say aver, but ever, fever.
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.

Never guess--it is not safe:
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralph.

Heron, granary, canary,
Crevice and device, and eyrie,

Face but preface, but efface,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust, and scour, but scourging,

Ear but earn, and wear and bear
Do not rime with here, but ere.

Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,

Monkey, donkey, clerk, and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation--think of psyche--!
Is a paling, stout and spikey,

Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing "groats" and saying "grits"?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel,
Strewn with stones, like rowlock, gunwale,

Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict, and indict!

Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?

Finally: which rimes with "enough"
Though, through, plough, cough, hough, or tough?

Hiccough has the sound of "cup."
My advice is--give it up!

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Dearest creature in creationStudying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verseSounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse I will keep you, Susy, busy,Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye your dress you'll tear,So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer, Pray, console your loving poet,Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

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This year has seen so many seismic events that Oxford Dictionaries has expanded its word of the year to encompass several "Words of an Unprecedented Year".

Its words are chosen to reflect 2020's "ethos, mood, or preoccupations".

They include bushfires, Covid-19, WFH, lockdown, circuit-breaker, support bubbles, keyworkers, furlough, Black Lives Matter and moonshot.

Use of the word pandemic has increased by more than 57,000% this year.

Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, said: "I've never witnessed a year in language like the one we've just had. The Oxford team was identifying hundreds of significant new words and usages as the year unfolded, dozens of which would have been a slam dunk for Word of the Year at any other time.

"It's both unprecedented and a little ironic - in a year that left us speechless, 2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other."

How news impacts language

All languages evolve, but the rate of evolution has sped up today.

In this, the Too Much Information Age, when media is all pervasive, new words and usages adapt at an ever faster rate.

It's inevitable that the pandemic should have rescued old words ( coronavirus), super-charged some that were loitering in our culture ( furlough), and - in the case of Covid - created a neologism.

What's more striking to me is how the news cycle generates new phrases and usages.

Black Lives Matter - BLM - was in usage before George Floyd was killed; but today it has penetrated our public domain as never before. So too mail-in and conspiracy theory - not because the conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots are new or true, but rather because they are espoused by the most famous person in the world, in Donald J Trump.

Yet the news cycle is a fickle friend, and sometimes not even a friend. That usage of Brexit should be down by 80% even as we enter its most critical phase shows that, sadly, the limited bandwidth of news programmes and human attention can harm priorities.

Isn't now exactly the moment when we should be using Brexit more than ever?

Oxford University Press said it used "evidence-based data" to explore this year's language developments.

"We saw new words emerge, and historical words resurface with new significance, as the English language developed rapidly to keep pace with the political upheaval and societal tensions that defined the year," they added.

They divided their findings into specific areas:

The language of Covid-19

The report said the word coronavirus dates back to the 60s and was previously "mainly used by scientific and medical specialists".

But by April this year it had become "one of the most frequently used nouns in the English language, exceeding even the usage of the word time. By May, it had been surpassed by Covid-19.

It stated that the arrival of the pandemic saw "huge increases" from March in the use of circuit breaker, lockdown, and shelter-in-place, along with support bubbles or pods, face masks, PPE, medics, delivery drivers, and supermarket staff key workers, frontliners, or essential workers.

The report also stated that phrases including mask up, anti-mask, anti-masker and mask-shaming were "among the proliferation of words reflecting attitudes towards the issue of mask-wearing". Superspreader is a word dating back to the 70s, the report said, but it spiked in October when coronavirus cases spread in the White House.

The word reopening also increased in frequency as summer approached, relating to the number of shopping outlets that were closed during lockdown, while moonshot came into use, as the name of the UK government's programme for mass Covid testing.

Technology and remote working

Two words that have seen a growth of more than 300% since March are remote and remotely. As for Zoom meetings, it will come as no surprise that the words mute and unmute have had a "significant rise in usage this year".

Other words getting a lot more use include workcation (up 500%) - a holiday in which you also work - and staycation (up 380%) - a holiday at home or in your home country. Both words have seen increase in usage, almost 500% and 380% respectively.

This year also saw an increase in activism and demonstrations, despite social distancing being in place. Usage of Black Lives Matter and BLM surged following the death of George Floyd in the US.

The report also said use of conspiracy theory has "almost doubled between October 2019 and October 2020" and use of the term QAnon increased 960% during that time.

It added that the words impeachment and acquittal, relating to US President Donald Trump, were more prevalent at the early part of the year, whereas more recently, words such as mail-in, relating to US voting, were up 3,000% compared with 2019.

Meanwhile the word Brexit was used 80% less this year, but usage was up for the phrase cancel culture - the withdrawing of support from public figures whose words and actions were considered socially unacceptable.

The environment

The report said that levels of media coverage for climate change have fallen this year due to the pandemic. But it said that the result was a new word being used - anthropause, referring to "the global slowdown of travel and other human activity and the subsequent welcome consequences, such as a decrease in light and noise pollution".

Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

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OED Word of the Year expanded for 'unprecedented' 2020

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This year saw 'hundreds of significant new words' rather than just one, Oxford Dictionaries say.

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Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia

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Nineteen-year-old says he is ‘devastated’ after being accused of cultural vandalism

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The Hill We Climb: the Amanda Gorman poem that stole the inauguration show

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It's often said that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. Given the fact that many of the words we use in English stem from Latin and Ancient Greek words - in common with many other European languages - what is it about English that has attracted this reputation for being so fearsomely difficult? And is it really even that difficult, when so many other countries adopt it as their second language and speak it a lot more fluently than we Brits speak other languages? We'll leave you to make your own mind up...

It just makes no sense!

One of the reasons why English is known for being difficult is because it's full of contradictions. There are innumerable examples of conundrums such as:

There is no ham in hamburger.

Neither is there any apple nor pine in pineapple.

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

"Overlook" and "oversee" have opposite meanings, while "look" and "see" mean the same thing.

As native speakers, we rarely stop to think how illogical many of the things we say really are - we're just used to them. Unless you've been brought up speaking English, how can you possibly begin to learn all these oddities? It's little wonder that people trying to learn English end up feeling confused. But it gets worse.

Exceptions to rules

One of the hardest things about English is that although there are rules, there are lots of exceptions to those rules - so just when you think you've got to grips with a rule, something comes along to shatter what you thought you knew by contradicting it. A good example is the rule for remembering whether a word is spelt "ie" or "ei": "I before E except after C". Thus "believe" and "receipt". But this is English - it's not as simple as that. What about "science"? Or "weird"? Or "seize"? There are loads of irregular verbs, too, such as "fought", which is the past tense of "fight", while the past tense of "light" is "lit". So learning English isn't just a question of learning the rules - it's about learning the many exceptions to the rules. The numerous exceptions make it difficult to apply existing knowledge and use the same principle with a new word, so it's harder to make quick progress.

The order of the words

Native English-speakers intuitively know what order to put words in, but this is hard to teach to those learning the language. The difference between the right and wrong order is so subtle that it's hard to explain beyond simply saying that it "just sounds right". For example, we often use more than one adjective to describe a noun, but which order should they go in? We would say "an interesting little book" not "a little interesting book". Both are technically grammatically correct, but the first "just sounds right". It's a bit of a nightmare for those who are trying to learn, and it may prove one nuance too much. (In fact, there is some method to this particular English madness - but it's quite involved, and beyond the scope of this article to explain it.)

Pronunciation

As if the spelling wasn't hard enough, English pronunciation is the cause of much confusion among those trying to learn English. Some words are very low on vowels, such as the word "strengths", which is hard to say when you're not accustomed to English pronunciation. What's more, words that end in the same combination of letters aren't necessarily pronounced in the same way. Why is "trough" pronounced "troff", "rough" pronounced "ruff", "bough" pronounced "bow" (to rhyme with cow) and "through" pronounced "throo"? There are silent letters at the start of words, too. Why are there so many words that begin with a silent "K", such as "knife"? Or even a silent "G", such as "gnome"? If it's not pronounced, what's the point of including that letter in the first place, if it only adds to the confusion of both native speakers and learners? And don't get us started on the number of hapless tourists who don't know where to begin with pronouncing a town name such as "Worcester". Sadly, many English learners have to learn the hard way when it comes to our confusing pronunciation; if you pronounce something incorrectly, most Brits will demonstrate the correct way to you - but not without a little chuckle at your expense.

Emphasis

To make matters even more complex, the way in which you emphasise certain words in a sentence can subtly change its meaning. For example, consider the different ways of emphasising the sentence below:
- I sent him a letter - a plain statement.
- sent him a letter - used to imply that you sent him the letter - someone else didn't send it (or "you didn't send it, I did").
- I him a letter - this could imply "I sent him a letter, but I'm not sure he received it".
- I sent a letter - used to imply that you sent him the letter - you didn't send it to someone else (perhaps even "you weren't meant to read it").
- I sent him a - you sent him a letter, not anything else.
When you're not used to speaking English, these may all sound the same to you. It's only by constantly being exposed to English that you start to pick up on these subtleties.

Homophones

Confused yet? If not, you will be after this next point. English is absolutely full of homophones - words that sound the same but have different meanings or spellings. We've already dedicated an article to homophones, but if you don't have time to read that, here are a few examples...

A bandage is wound around a wound ("wound", pronounced "wowned" is the past tense of "wind", as well as an injury when pronounced "woond").

The door was too close to the table to close (the first "close" is pronounced with a soft "S" and means "near", while the second is pronounced with a hard "S" and means "shut").

I decided to desert my dessert in the desert (the first "desert" means "abandon" and has the emphasis placed on the second syllable; "dessert" is pronounced the same but means a pudding; and the second "desert" means the dry, sandy environment with camels, and is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable).

Homophones exist in the English language that has no fewer than seven different meanings - namely words that sound like 'course' and 'raise'. Most have only two or three meanings - such as "there", "their" and "they're" - but that's still enough to add an extra level or two of complexity for those trying to master the English language.

Synonyms aren't necessarily interchangeable

Flick through a thesaurus and you'll see countless groups of words that supposedly mean the same thing. You'd think that this would mean that they were interchangeable - but you'd be wrong. Even words whose definitions are seemingly in the same ballpark differ subtly - or apply to something completely different, because English words can have multiple meanings. You can't always swap words with the same meaning, and this means that it's easy to end up using a word in completely the wrong way. For example, you "watch" television, and you can either "watch a film" or "see a film" - but you don't "see television". But you're not a "watcher" when you're doing this - you're a "viewer", even though you don't "view television" or "view a movie". To take another example, I could talk about a swan's elegant neck, but I couldn't swap the word "elegant" for the word "classic" or "chic" (both suggestions I found in the thesaurus when I looked up "elegant") because these are words that apply to fashion, not birds! If you were learning English, though, you wouldn't necessarily know that.

Idioms

English is a very old language, and over the course of many centuries, interesting sayings have been incorporated into everyday language that make little sense if you haven't grown up with them. "Barking up the wrong tree", "the straw that broke the camel's back" and "raining cats and dogs" are all examples of idioms that add colour to the English language. If you find yourself starting to use idioms when you speak English, well done: you've mastered it!

Traces of archaic English

Though English does 'move with the times', there are still plenty of archaic words floating around that you may well encounter (and they may not be in your English dictionary). "Alas" (an expression of grief or pity) is one of the more common ones, but language of the sort traditionally used in the Bible is also still commonly understood, such as "Thou shalt not kill" in the Ten Commandments. This means "You will not kill" in modern lingo, but the Ten Commandments usually retain this old language. Old-fashioned words such as "apothecary" (someone who prepares medicine) and "shilling" (an old form of English currency) will crop up in historical dramas that you watch on television. You'll also see old literary and poetic references cropping up in popular culture, such as Shakespeare's "To be or not to be" or Burns' "My love is like a red, red rose".

Regional dialects

We'd imagine that all languages have regional dialects, but when you add the bizarre pronunciations and unique additional vocabularies of the UK's many regional dialects, they don't exactly help the poor folk trying to learn English. It's bad enough for us southerners to understand people from Glasgow, or even for people from Edinburgh to understand people from Glasgow. There's a broad north/south divide in the pronunciation of certain words, a good example being "bath", which is pronounced with a short "A" by those "up north" and a long "A" ("barth") by those "down south". Of course, every English-speaking country also has its own way of speaking the language; the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all have their own distinctive way of pronouncing words. Which you end up using when your native language isn't English probably depends on whereabouts your English teacher is from, or whereabouts in the country you're learning.

Is it really the hardest language?

As we've seen, then, English is pretty challenging. But it's not the only contender for the World's Most Difficult Language. Other notoriously tricky languages include Finnish, Russian, Japanese and Mandarin. Mandarin's tone system, for instance, is famously tricky (but when you look at the 'Emphasis' section above, you'll see that English can be just as bad!). Finnish is held to be difficult because of its numerous cases; Arabic because, among other things, its script has four different variations for each letter depending on where in the word it sits. Written Japanese differs from spoken Japanese, and there are three different writing systems - including 2,000 to 3,000 kanji characters that must be learned by heart. It makes English sound easy in comparison!

Ultimately, though, it's down to the individual whether or not a particular language is difficult to learn. Some people have a natural aptitude for languages and pick them up quickly; children, of course, absorb new languages much more easily than adults. The difficulty of a language also depends on its similarity to your own language. You'll probably find it easier to pick up French if you're Italian, because these languages use many of the same roots, and the same alphabet. If you're used to the Roman alphabet then you may struggle to learn oriental languages that rely on symbols, such as Japanese. English isn't so bad once you get used to it, and it's probably only commonly talked about as being hard because so many people are trying to learn it. If you want to take your English to the next level, join us at Oxford Royale Summer Schools for a summer of turbocharging your English skills.

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Why Is English So Hard to Learn? - Oxford Royale Academy

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It's often said that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. Given the fact that many of the words we use in English stem from Latin and Ancient Greek words - in common with many other European languages - what is it about English that has attracted this reputation for being so fearsomely...

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"50 Black young adult novelists you should read, from Angie Thomas to Walter Dean Myers"

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"50 Black young adult novelists you should read, from Angie Thomas to Walter Dean Myers"

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As a genre, young adult literature is still fairly young. Its modern iteration has only been around since the 1960s. And though YA readership has grown exponentially over the last decades, the diversity of the authors behind the books is in its infancy. But that is changing.

As the number of Black YA authors grows, so have their stories. These authors not only "show Black teens dealing with the same coming of age issues that any teen would deal with - falling in love, finding your place in the world, coming to terms with their sexuality," but also "navigating issues like systemic racism and microaggressions," says LaKeshia N. Darden, librarian and adjunct professor at Campbell University and Coretta Scott King Book Awards Jury, Chair 2019-2021.

"These are very unique and real-world experiences for Black teens and that is why these stories are so important and so needed. There is no one Black experience," she adds.

With input from Darden, we have curated a selection of established and new Black YA authors whose works have captured, through fiction, the experiences of Black young adults.

The list is by no means exhaustive. It includes a range of YA authors who span the decades, including authors who are definitive, debut, award-winning and bestselling. Their works feature a wide range of genres, including literary, speculative, fantasy, science fiction and romance.

Authors are listed in alphabetical order by last name.For every novelist we have included, there are scores more to be read and discovered. And like Black YA literature, this list will continue to grow.

Elizabeth Acevedo: The Afro-Latina poet's novel, "The Poet X," about a young woman finding her voice, made a huge impact winning the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie Medal and the Michael L. Printz Award. Acevedo followed "Poet X" with novels "With the Fire on High" and "Clap When You Land."

Tomi Adeyemi: The author's debut novel, the Hugo award-winning "Children of Blood and Bone" and its sequel "Children of Virtue and Vengeance" were both USA TODAY bestsellers. "Children of Blood and Bone," about a young African girl who tries to bring back magic after it's been taken by a dictator, is being developed for film. Adeyemi, who was named one of "Time" magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2020, is currently working on the final book in her Legacy of Orisha trilogy.

Kwame Alexander: The award-winning poet and author of more than 35 books writes for children and young adults. He is a self-proclaimed fan of other YA novelists Jacqueline Woodson and Nikki Grimes. His novels include "He Said, She Said," "Rebound" and "Swing." His novel "The Crossover," written in a mix of free verse and hip-hop poetry, won the 2015 Newbery Medal.
More: More: 100 resources to take action against racism, help Black organizations and learn to be anti-racist Looking for books about racism? Experts suggest these must-read titles for adults and kids
Dean Atta: The British poet's work often deals with the issues of identity and social justice. His debut novel, "The Black Flamingo," follows the story of Michael, a mixed-race teen growing up in London who finds a sense of belonging with the Drag Society. The novel won a Stonewall Book Award in 2020.

Malorie Blackman: The British author has written myriad books for children and young adults, as well as for television. She is best known for her young adult series, "Noughts & Crosses," which debuted in 2001 and whose most recent installment, "Crossfire" came out in 2019. The books have been adapted into a series in Britain and can be found on Peacock.

Roseanne A. Brown: The Ghana-born author is also a journalist, whose work has been featured by Voice of America. Her debut novel, "A Song of Wraiths and Ruin," the first of a fantasy duology, is inspired by West African folklore. The sequel, "A Psalm of Storms and Silence", is scheduled to be released later this year.

Mahogany L. Browne: This writers works include poetry collection "Woke: A Young Poet's Call to Justice" and poem "Black Girl Magic." Her first YA novel, "Chlorine Sky," a coming-of-age novel in verse, was released in January.

Kacen Callender: The prolific author - publishing six books in two years - writes for readers from middle grade to adult. They received the Lambda Literary Award and the Stonewall Book Award, for their middle-grade novel "Hurricane Child." They followed up with the YA novels "This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story" and "Felix Ever After." Their novel "King and the Dragonflies" won the 2020 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Brandy Colbert: The author of fiction and nonfiction won a Stonewall Book Award for her YA novel "Little & Lion," about a bisexual teen dealing with her stepbrother's bipolar diagnosis. Her other novels include "Pointe," "Finding Yvonne," "The Revolution of Birdie Randolf," "The Only Black Girls in Town" and "The Voting Booth."

Jerry Craft: The creator of award-winning comic strip "Mama's Boyz," is also the author of two YA graphic novels. His debut, 2019's "New Kid," about how a young man's life is changed when he is enrolled in a prestigious private school, is a USA TODAY Bestseller and won the 2020 Newbery Medal and 2020 The Coretta Scott King Book Award. His follow-up, "Class Act," released in 2020, is also a USA TODAY bestseller.

Christopher Paul Curtis: The author discovered he loved writing while taking breaks at a factory job where writing "became a refuge." He's best known for his award-winning children's novels but he has written for young adults as well, most notably 2004's "Bucking the Sarge."

Tanita S. Davis: The author's best-known novel, 2009's "Mare's War," began as her college thesis. The novel, which won a Coretta Scott King Award, follows two teens who embark on a road trip with their grandmother, a WWII veteran, who shares stories of her past. The author's other books include "A la Carte," "Happy Families," "Peas and Carrots" and "Serena Says."

Tracy Deonn: The author has worked in live theater, game production and education. A recipient of 2021's Coretta Scott King/Steptoe Award for New Talent, Deonn's debut novel was 2020's "Legendborn." She has also contributed to the science fiction and fantasy anthology "From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back."

Sharon Draper: The inaugural winner of the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent in 1995, the author and educator was also named National Teacher of the Year in 1997. She has written myriad books for young adults, in addition to poetry and nonfiction. Among them, "Copper Sun", "Forged by Fire," and "The Battle of Jericho."
More: More:'Decolonize your bookshelf': Little libraries, book boxes promote conversation about race in America 10 must-read Black History Month book recommendations: Cicely Tyson, Angie Thomas and more
Akwaeke Emezi: An acclaimed author of adult fiction, Emezi wasnamed a "5 Under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. Their YA debut novel, "Pet," explores the themes of identity and justice and was a National Book Award finalist, a Stonewall Book Award winner and a Walter Dean Myers Honor Book.

Sharon G. Flake: The author's debut novel was 1998's "The Skin I'm In," a story of a 13 -year-old girl who learns to stand up for herself and love her skin. Her other YA titles include "Money Hungry," "Begging for Change" and "Bang!" In January, she released "The Life I'm In," a companion novel to "The Skin I'm In" about a young woman trapped in human trafficking.

Lamar Giles: One of the founding members of the non-profit organization We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), Giles (who has written under L.R. Giles), writes for teens and adults. His first YA thriller, "Fake ID," was an Edgar Award nominee, as was his follow-up "Endangered." His most recent, 2020's "Not So Pure and Simple," is a coming-of-age story that focuses on societal pressure and toxic masculinity.

Nikki Grimes: Like many YA authors, Grimes pens books for children as well, and has authored more than 50 titles. She has also been an inspiration for many YA authors, including Kwame Alexander. Her YA titles include "A Girl Named Mister," "Bronx Masquerade," "Between the Lines."

Candice Iloh: The poet and essayist's debut novel, 2020's "Every Body Looking," was a finalist for the National Book Award and a Michael L. Printz Award honoree. The novel follows the journey of Ada for her freshman year at a historically Black college where she learns to make choices for herself, her future and her place in the world.

Tiffany D. Jackson: The author's debut book, "Allegedly," was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. She won the Coretta Scott King/Steptoe Award for New Talent in 2019, after the publication of her second, critically acclaimed novel, "Monday's Not Coming." Other novels include "Let Me Hear a Rhyme" and "Grown."

Alaya Dawn Johnson: A writer of speculative fiction for both adult and YA readers, Johnson's "The Summer Prince," takes place four hundred years in the future where a young artist, June, and the Summer King, Enki, stage revolutionary art that fuels a rebellion. Her second YA title, 2014's "Love Is the Drug" follows Emily Bird, a picture-perfect student who, after a chance meeting with a government agent, awakens several days later with no memory of the past few days. That title was a Nebula award winner.

Angela Johnson: The author and poet started out as a children's book author but eventually branched out to YA novels. She won both the Coretta Scott King Award and the Michael L. Printz Award for her YA novel "The First Part Last," which follows the story of Bobby who, on his 16th birthday, finds out he is going to become a father. Her other YA novels include "Heaven," "Looking for Red," and "A Certain October."

Leah Johnson: The author's debut novel, "You Should See Me in a Crown," was the inaugural pick in Reese Witherspoon's YA Book Club and was a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book. Currently, she is a Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow. Her second novel, "Rise to the Sun" is due in July.

Julius Lester: The late author was also a civil rights activist, musician and educator, who taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Lester wrote nonfiction and novels for children, young adults and adults. He was awarded the Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award. Among his YA works are "When Dad Killed Mom," "This Strange New Feeling" "Guardian" and "Time's Memory."

Kekla Magoon: A self-proclaimed "book dork," Magoon is an award-winning author of such YA books as "How It Went Down," "The Rock and the River," "Fire in the Streets" and "Light it Up." She also co-wrote the NAACP Image Award-winning "X: A Novel" with Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X. The novel follows the formative years of the late activist.

Janet McDonald: The late author practiced law before becoming a novelist and, after writing her memoir, "Project Girl" she turned to YA fiction. Her first novel, 2001's "Spellbound," was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Her other novels include "Brother Hood," "Chill Wind" and "Off-Color."

Candice "Cam" Montgomery: The author, who tends bar at night, writes YA novels and has been featured in anthologies, writing about Black teens across all intersections. She has written two YA novels, "Home and Away" and "By Any Means Necessary."

Brittney Morris: The author has both written for video games and young adults. Her debut novel, "Slay" follows a teen game developer as she fights to protect the game she created and the Black gaming community she holds dear. Her most recent work was authoring "Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - Wings of Fury." "The Cost of Knowing," about a Black teen with the power to see into the future, is scheduled for a spring release.

Bethany C. Morrow: The author writes for both adult and YA audiences in an array of genres including speculative, fantasy and historical fiction. Her YA titles include "So Many Beginnings" and "A Song Below Water." She has also contributed to the anthology "Take the Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance."

Shelia P. Moses: The poet, author, playwright and producer is known for both her nonfiction and YA novels. Her 2004 novel, "The Legend of Buddy Bush," was a National Book Award finalist and Coretta Scott King Honoree. Her novel "Joseph" was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Her other books include "The Baptism," "The Return of Buddy Bush" and "Joseph's Grace."

Maika and Maritza Moulite: Together, the sisters have co-authored two YA novels. Their debut was "Dear Haiti, Love Alaine," where an intricate prank lands a high school journalist in hot water. Their recent novel, "One of the Good Ones," which follows Happi Smith on a journey after the death of her older sister, was released this year to rave reviews.

Walter Dean Myers: The late and storied author wrote more than 100 books, from picture books to YA to nonfiction. He was awarded the ALA's Margaret A. Edwards Award for his body of work. He was the first Michael L. Printz winner for excellence in young adult literature, the first Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement and a nominee for the Hans Christian AndersenAward. His novels include "Monster," "Hoops," "Motown and Didi," and "Lockdown."

Marilyn Nelson: A professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and former poet laureate of Connecticut, Nelson has written in prose and verse. Her novels include "Pemba's Song", "American Ace" and "Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem, which received a Coretta Scott King honor.

Nnedi Okorafor: The USA TODAY bestselling author coined the term Africanfuturism, referring to it as a sub-category of science fiction. Her YA novels include "Akata Witch," "Akata Warrior" and "Ikenga".

Tochi Onyebuchi: The author has worked in criminal justice, the tech industry and immigration law, but he is best known as a writer of YA fantasy novels, including "Beasts Made of Night," "Crown of Thunder" and "War Girls." His latest novel, "Rebel Sisters," a sequel to "War Girls," came out in 2020.

Ben Philippe: The author and screenwriter teaches at Barnard College and has written such publications as Vanity Fair and The Guardian. His YA novel "The Field Guide to the North American Teenager," was a William C. Morris YA Debut Award winner. His next book is a memoir-in-essays called "Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend," due out in April.

Jason Reynolds: A prolific and award-winning author of YA novels and poetry, Reynolds' first novel, "When I Was the Greatest," won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent in 2015. "Ghost," the first installment in his Track Series, was a National Book Award finalist. In 2020 he was named National Ambassador for Young People's Literature at the Library of Congress.

Justin A. Reynolds: Before becoming an author, Reynolds was a registered nurse, specializing in hematology and oncology. His debut novel, 2019's "Opposite of Always," is in development for film. His second novel, "Early Departures," published in 2020. The author's "Miles Morales: Shock Waves," a Spider-Man graphic novel, is due to be released in June.

Martha Southgate: The novelist and essayist is best known for her adult novel, "Third Girl From the Left," but Southgate is also the author of YA novels including "Another Way to Dance," about an aspiring Black ballerina and "The Fall of Rome," which takes place in a private boys boarding school in New England. She won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for new talent in 1997.

Nic Stone: The author's novel "Dear Martin" and its sequel, "Dear Justyce," were both USA TODAY bestsellers. "Dear Martin" tells the tale of Justyce McAllister who writes a journal to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about his teachings when Justyce finds himself in a perilous situation. Stone is also the author of "Odd One Out", "Jackpot" and "Shuri: A Black Panther Novel."

Liara Tamani: Among her many pursuits, Tamani has attended law school, worked as a marketing coordinator and taught yoga and dance. Her novel 2017 novel "Calling My Name," was a PEN America Literary Award and Golden Kite Award finalist. Her most recent novel, 2020's "All the Things We Never Knew," is a novel of first loves and features the love story of Carli and Rex, who meet on their Texas high school basketball court.

Mildred D. Taylor: The author, whose work spans the decades, told the American Library Association that each of her books is based on her or her family's experiences. The winner of multiple Coretta Scott King Awards, she received their Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2020. She was awarded the 1977 Newbery Medal for one of her best-known novels, "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry." Her other works include "Song of the Trees," "Let the Circle Be Unbroken," and "All the Days Past, All the Says to Come."

Angie Thomas: The author and activist's debut novel, 2017's "The Hate U Give," began as her senior project at Belhaven University. The novel went on to become a USA TODAY bestseller and was eventually made into a film in 2018. Her most recent novel, "Concrete Rose," a follow-up to "The Hate U Give" was published in January and, like its predecessor, is a USA TODAY bestseller.

Renée Watson: An educator, activist and novelist, Watson founded the I, Too Arts Collective whose mission is to build upon writer Langston Hughes' legacy by nurturing underrepresented communities in the creative arts. Her 2017 YA novel "Piecing Me Together," won a Coretta Scott King Award and Newbery Honor. Her other novels include "This Side of Home," "Watch Us Rise," co-written with Ellen Hagan and "Love is a Revolution".

Alicia D. Williams: The author's first novel, "Genesis Begins Again," follows the life of 13-year-old Genesis Anderson who hates her dark skin and natural hair and finds solace, self-love and her own voice through music. Williams was awarded the 2020 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent. Her second book is a children's book about Zora Neale Hurston titled "Jump at the Sun."

Rita Williams-Garcia: The author has been publishing YA novels since the 1980s. Her 2009 novel "Jumped" was a National Book Award finalist for Young People's Literature. Her other novels include "Every Time a Rainbow Dies," "No Laughter Here" and "Clayton Byrd Goes Underground." Her latest novel, "A Sitting in St. James," is due in May.

Ashley Woodfolk: This author worked in publishing for more than a decade before she turned to writing full-time. Her debut novel was 2018's "The Beauty That Remains." She followed it up with 2020's "When You Were Everything." Her most recent work is the Flyy Girls series, having published the first two installments, "Lux: The New Girl" and "Micah: The Good Girl", in 2020. They will be followed by "Noelle: The Mean Girl" in March and "Tobyn: The It Girl" in August.

Jacqueline Woodson: The prolific and award-winning author, who was recently named a 2020 MacArthur Fellow and Hans Christian Anderson Award winner, writes for all ages, though she primarily is known for her young adult novels. Arguably her best known, "Brown Girl Dreaming," won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Other works include "Miracle Boys," "After Tupac and D Foster," and "I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This."

Nicola Yoon: The Jamaican-American author, who writes her first drafts by hand, is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book recipient and a Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner. Two of her novels, "Everything, Everything" and "The Sun Is Also a Star," were USA TODAY bestsellers and both turned into major motion pictures. Her latest novel, "Instructions for Dancing," is due out this year.

Ibi Zoboi: The Haitian-American author's most recent novel, the USA TODAY bestseller "Punching the Air" was co-written with Yusef Salaam, who was exonerated after being wrongly convicted of rape. The novel, written in verse, is about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated and received critical acclaim. Zoboi's first YA novel, 2017's "American Street," was a National Book Award finalist. Zoboi later followed that novel up with "Pride," a re-telling of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" set in Brooklyn.

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50 Black young adult novelists you should read, from Angie Thomas to Walter Dean Myers

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As a genre, young adult literature is still fairly young. Its modern iteration has only been around since the 1960s. And though YA readership has grown exponentially over the last decades, the diversity of the authors behind the books is in its infancy. But that is changing.

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"Birmingham library brings Shakespeare to life in dozens of languages"

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"Birmingham library brings Shakespeare to life in dozens of languages"

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It is a little-known fact that Birmingham is home to the largest Shakespeare collection in any public library in the world.

Created in 1864 to celebrate the playwright's 300th birthday, it was the world's first great Shakespeare collection and once held such standing that the Soviet government deposited 300 items in the collection during the depths of the cold war.

But in recent years the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library has become a neglected asset, according to Professor Ewan Fernie, chair of Shakespeare Studies at Birmingham University and director of the Everything to Everybody project, which is striving to bring the archive into the heart of 21st-century life.

"We're attempting to revitalise the collection with people and communities across the city, so it becomes something that is rediscovered and reproduced by Birmingham people now," said Fernie. "If we don't do that it's going to die, the world is changing and our culture is changing."

World's Stage, a series of seven short films, is the project's latest instalment, featuring a cast of 140 multilingual people from Birmingham, who perform in most of the 93 languages to be found in the collection.

Split into five acts, the films showcase people of various ages, communities and backgrounds performing Shakespearean lines in a huge range of languages and dialects, largely without subtitles.

"We wanted to see and hear Shakespeare in these beautiful languages," said Daniel Tyler-McTighe, director of art collective 27:31, who collaborated with Bafta-winning film-makers John Roddy and Ollie Walton on the films. "Even if we don't understand those languages, we just wanted to enjoy them as performances or as visuals."

The Everything to Everybody Project features 140 multilingual people from Birmingham. Photograph: Bengr Photo/Ben Gregory-Ring

The films explore the concepts of speaking, learning, owning, loving and living Shakespeare in a diverse and vibrant city - children from a local primary school perform a scene from Henry V in multiple languages, while another film features a cacophony of overlapping voices over scrapbooked Shakespeare works.

It culminates in a powerful eight-language version of the famous "All the world's a stage" speech from As You Like It.

Fernie said embracing the multilingual aspects of the collection was an essential part of making Shakespeare relevant to modern Birmingham, the second most diverse city outside London, whose inhabitants speak over 100 languages.

"We're hoping to both speak to the different constituencies of the city, but also to bring them together in a productive dialogue about who Shakespeare might be in Birmingham in the 21st century," he said.

Back in the 19th century, Birmingham's Shakespeare library was created instead of a statue of the Bard in the city as a way of giving his work to the people in the belief that doing so would genuinely "enrich and extend" our culture, Fernie explains.

"The more we found out about the history, the more we felt we've got to try again to do what they tried to do in the beginning, to give Shakespeare to the people."

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Birmingham library brings Shakespeare to life in dozens of languages

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It is a little-known fact that Birmingham is home to the largest Shakespeare collection in any public library in the world. Created in 1864 to celebrate the playwright's 300th birthday, it was the world's first great Shakespeare collection and once held such standing that the Soviet government deposited 300 items in the collection during the depths of the cold war.

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"As a Black Lord of the Rings fan, I felt left out of fantasy worlds. So I created my own"

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"As a Black Lord of the Rings fan, I felt left out of fantasy worlds. So I created my own"

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hen I was a child, I was what you would call a JRR Tolkien fangirl. I read The Lord of the Rings over and over. I traipsed around the countryside, imagining it was Middle-earth. With just a flight of imagination, I could be snug in the Shire, exploring the mines of Moria, or even flitting through the woods of Lothlórien.

When the first Lord of the Rings movie was finally released, I was 14 and so excited to see it. But immediately, I noticed something distressing: no one on screen looked like me. The darkest characters on screen, the orcs, were all male. Even as a monster, it seemed, there was no place for people who looked like me in Tolkien's world.

Thankfully, I had my own to work with. I grew up in Sierra Leone, a place I consider the most fantastical in the world. Magic was everywhere I looked. It was in my family's massive library, where there were so many books that I would make fortresses of them and crawl inside. It was in the ocean just beyond my veranda, where, if I squinted hard enough, I would sometimes see whales breaching. It was in the trees, the people, the land itself. It was always there.

Fantasy was a lifesaver. When I was born, in the late 1980s, Sierra Leone was on the brink of civil war. The country was in chaos; people were suffering and dying. To distract me, my father and grandmother would tell me stories about the magic of Africa, some of them rooted in real history. Mami Wata, the goddess of all waters, slept in the salt marsh beyond our house that fed into the Atlantic ocean. In the Dahomey kingdom (now Benin), an all-female military force called the N'Nonmiton, or Dahomey Amazons, hunted elephants for their king. The Dogon tribe of Mali, our ancestral home, had mapped the stars without telescopes.

When I moved to the US in 1996, war was suddenly no longer a part of my life. But neither was the magic. Instead of goddesses and Amazons, there was now the legacy of slavery, civil rights and racial struggle. I was told that I was a Black person, and that Blackness came with a particular history and set of expectations, most of which I'd never heard of before. I'd only ever been Temne, my tribe in Sierra Leone. How was I supposed to understand this new identity?

Worse, there were no more epics. Growing up, my father had explained to me that epics - especially fantasy epics - are the mythos of a culture: they determine how a people see themselves. But in the US, it seemed Black people weren't afforded the privilege of crafting our own narrative in the fantastical sense. In every book, every film, every advertisement, Black people struggled. We were poor, we were uneducated, on drugs or the drug dealers. We were baby mamas, gangsters and prisoners. We were perpetual victims or perpetual predators, lurking on the fringes of society.

But this didn't make any sense to me. I knew my history. Yes, some Black people had been slaves, but others had been queens, kings, adventurers, tricksters, country folk. Yes, there were huts and slave cabins, but there were also castles in Ethiopia, towering walls and streetlights in Benin, libraries in Timbuktu and fortresses in Great Zimbabwe. The richest man to ever exist, Mansa Musa, was African. The N'Nonmiton, the female warriors my father and grandmother had told me tales about when I was young, were African. There was more to Blackness than struggle.

But in every Black book that won a medal, or every Black film that won an Oscar, there was always a Black person struggling against racial oppression. There are consequences to only lauding such portrayals. Perpetually tying the narrative of Black people and Blackness to slavery, colonisation and oppression meant that Black people - Black children especially - were denied the chance to see ourselves as heroes with agency over our worlds. And non-Black people were denied the chance to root for us, only feeling pity and, of course, relief that they were not Black.

Namina Forna, author of The Gilded Ones. Photograph: Lillian Hathaway

This is the reason I became a writer.I wanted to create a fantasy world on par with the ones in my favourite books from childhood: The Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter. I wanted to put Black and brown people at the forefront of this world; and women, who have so often been pushed to the periphery of fantasy, at the very centre. In the tradition of my favourite Black female authors, such as Toni Morrison, Octavia E Butler and Zora Neale Hurston, I wanted to create spaces where I could hold up Black people, especially Black and brown women, to ensure that they too were seen through the lens of the fantastic, that they too could be fairies, mermaids or creatures of myth.

My debut novel The Gilded Ones is set in Otera, an African-inspired fantasy world. It follows a group of girls who are deemed demons by society because they are Alaki, near-immortal beings who are faster and stronger than regular humans. When actual demons invade, the girls are given a choice: fight them or die.

It is a work of feminism, and it is a work of hope: it is the kind of book I wished I'd had earlier. One that offers a space not only to people who look like me, but to everyone. And as my book is published worldwide, I'm happy to say I don't need to pretend I'm in Middle-earth any more. While Tolkien's world allowed me a safe space as a child, it also showed something more important: how to create one of my own. With The Gilded Ones, I think I finally have.

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As a Black Lord of the Rings fan, I felt left out of fantasy worlds. So I created my own | Namina Forna

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hen I was a child, I was what you would call a JRR Tolkien fangirl. I read The Lord of the Rings over and over. I traipsed around the countryside, imagining it was Middle-earth. With just a flight of imagination, I could be snug in the Shire, exploring the mines of Moria, or even flitting through the woods of Lothlórien.

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"Learn 10 Commonly Confused Words With TikTok and The Times"

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"Learn 10 Commonly Confused Words With TikTok and The Times"

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Help students make sense of tricky words with TikTok videos from a member of our Teaching Project, and usage examples from The New York Times.

Credit... Cindy Lozito

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1.

Many of us, whether at school or in the workplace, puzzle over how to use commonly confused words like affect and effect, farther and further, and capitol and capital.

We were excited to discover that Claudine James, an English teacher who is a member of the first-ever class of The New York Times Teaching Project, has helped students tackle many of these tricky words through an engaging, accessible platform: TikTok.

Ms. James wanted to find a creative way to reach her students remotely during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I started posting grammar lessons on TikTok because my students who were virtual learners weren't watching my YouTube videos," she said. "I asked my students what would they like for me to do to get them to watch the videos, and their answer was TikTok. I started the account that day."

Using the handle @iamthatenglishteacher, she brings the topics she covers with her eighth-grade English classes in Malvern, Ark., to a much wider audience. Her account now has more than one million followers.

We have paired five of Ms. James's videos with examples of how commonly confused words have been used in The Times. We hope that this piece serves not only as a learning tool, but as a reminder to students that their English lessons can be relevant everywhere - from social media to The New York Times.

Use farther for describing physical distance and further for non-measurable or metaphorical distance or advancement.

You can see these words in action in the Upshot article " The Typical American Lives Only 18 Miles From Mom." The writers Quoctrung Bui and Claire Cain Miller use further to describe points on the socioeconomic scale and farther to describe physical distance:

"It speaks to a class divide in the population," Mr. Pollak said. "Particularly as you go further down the socioeconomic scale, people are living pretty close to their parents, and this means they're able to provide help."

Families live closest in the Northeast and the South, and farthest apart on the West Coast and in the Mountain States. Part of the reason is probably cultural - Western families have historically been the least rooted - but a large part is geographical: People live farther apart in rural areas.

Most of the time, affect is a verb and effect is a noun. Vocabulary.com explains the few exceptions.

In " Color Has a Powerful Effect on Behavior, Researchers Assert," Lindsey Gruson uses effect as a noun to describe the impact of color on psychology, and affect as a verb to describe how mood influences health:

Color therapists themselves disagree about why and how color acts as they believe it does. Mr. Birren, who has concentrated on the psychological effects of color, said he does not believe those effects are directly physiological. As designers and interior decorators have discovered, color sets a mood; this in turn, Mr. Birren said, affects health because as many as half of modern man's diseases may have a psychosomatic component.

The U.S. Capitol is the building where Congress meets, but a capital is the city that's the seat, or location, of government. Capital also has a few other meanings, such as an uppercase letter.

In the article " By the People, for the People, but Not Necessarily Open to the People," Emily Badger uses capital when talking about a city and capitol when talking about a building:

The seven-foot-tall metal fencing that has sealed the perimeter of the U.S. Capitol grounds and fortified the Supreme Court across the street is temporary. But it portends lasting change likely to come: In the capital city, there will be more hardening, more barriers, less openness, less access.

Use accept when something is being received. Use except when something is being left out.

In the Real Estate article " A Bed-Stuy Apartment: Well-Known Terrain," Joyce Cohen uses accept to say that an apartment hunter received a new job, but uses except to exclude a period of time.

Except for her years in college and graduate school, Patrice Fenton always lived in Brooklyn.

... Last December, the family, which now included a daughter, Haile Masani, came home for the holidays. Ms. Fenton, her coursework done, accepted another job at the school where she had worked, Fort Greene Preparatory Academy. While they apartment-hunted, they stayed with Ms. Fenton's parents in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Use access when talking about the ability to enter or use something. Use excess to say there is too much or more than is necessary.

In " From Example to Excess in Silicon Valley," Jenna Wortham uses access when talking about the ability to use the internet and excess to describe an over-the-top wedding:

Then there is Facebook. Over the last few years, the company has been accused of valuing profits over privacy and the public good. So last month, when its chief, Mark Zuckerberg, announced an effort called Internet.org to expand Web access in the developing world, some contended that the plan was motivated mainly by self-interest.

... If there was a single event this summer that symbolized the perceived excess of Silicon Valley, it was the wedding of Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster. He threw a multimillion-dollar "Lord of the Rings"-themed wedding in the redwoods of Big Sur, complete with a nine-foot-high cake and custom-made costumes for the attendees.

Which of these words do you already use correctly? Which are the most difficult? What strategies did you learn for remembering definitions for the most challenging words?

Do you think that TikTok is an effective way to teach short lessons about spelling and grammar? Do you plan to delve further into " GrammarTok?"

What other words do you frequently confuse? What topics do you hope Ms. James covers next?

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Learn 10 Commonly Confused Words With TikTok and The Times

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Help students make sense of tricky words with TikTok videos from a member of our Teaching Project, and usage examples from The New York Times. Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1.

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Kyle Sutherland's Hidden History of English

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Kyle Sutherland's Hidden History of English

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Why is the Plural of Human not Humen? - The Hidden History of English

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Professional and reliable IELTS coaching. Achieve the band score you deserve! Free IELTS insights and test prep resources here.

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Challenge yourself with dozens of word games, puzzles, crosswords, and quizzes with new content every day!

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A very cool poet who writes in Scots! (this one's my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGQTG0vXSyg)

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Alright lads, if you're here from my twitter then you already know the drill, I'm a wee scone held together with pure spite and duct tape. Stay tuned for Scots, sarcasm and square go's.

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Six Dr Seuss books will no longer be published because of racially insensitive imagery, the company that preserves the author's legacy has said.

Among the six children's titles being withdrawn are If I Ran the Zoo, Scrambled Eggs Super, McElligot's Pool and On Beyond Zebra!

"These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong," Dr Seuss Enterprises said in a statement .

It said the decision was made after consulting experts and teachers.

"Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr Seuss Enterprises' catalogue represents and supports all communities and families," it added.

The other books affected are And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street- Dr Seuss's first book, published in 1937 - and The Cat's Quizzer.

The announcement was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the late American author and illustrator's birthday.

The decision prompted a backlash from some commentators, who said that ceasing the publications was an example of "cancel culture".

Books by Dr Seuss - who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Massachusetts and died in 1991 - have been translated into numerous languages, as well as in braille, and are sold in more than 100 countries.

They've also been made into movies, including 2000's How The Grinch Stole Christmas starring Jim Carrey and 2012's animated 3D film The Lorax.

But despite the books' popularity there has been disquiet expressed over the way they portrayed non-white characters.

For example, in And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, a character described as Chinese has two lines for eyes, carries chopsticks and a bowl of rice, and wears traditional Japanese-style shoes.

Another title, If I Ran the Zoo, depicts two men from Africa as shirtless, shoeless and wearing grass skirts as they carry an exotic animal.

The National Education Association in the US, which founded Read Across America Day in 1998, has in recent years put less emphasis on Dr Seuss's works, instead suggesting a more diverse reading list for children.

Some school districts in the US have also moved away from recommending the author. The Daily Wire reported last week that Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia had already told its teachers to "avoid connecting Read Across America Day with Dr Seuss".

In 2017, a school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, criticised a gift of 10 Dr Seuss books from former first lady Melania Trump, saying many of his works were "steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures and harmful stereotypes".

That same year, a Dr Seuss museum in his hometown of Springfield removed a mural that included an Asian stereotype after objections from three authors, who said the depiction was racist and refused to attend a museum event in protest.

Conservative figures in the US complained that the decision to pull Dr Seuss titles exemplified political correctness gone wrong and blamed leftwingers.

Donald Trump Jr, the former president's son, complained to Fox News: "They're [left wingers] cancelling Dr. Seuss...there's no place that they won't go".

The Cat In The Hat, one of Dr Seuss's most popular books, has also received criticism but will continue to be published for now.

Other popular children's books have been criticised in recent years for alleged racism.

Babar's Travels was removed from the shelves of libraries in East Sussex in the UK after complaints of racism from words used such as "savage cannibals".

Similar complaints have led to some of Herge's Tintin adventures being removed from libraries, or moved to the adult section.

And criticism over Laura Ingalls Wilder's portrayal of Native Americans in her Little House On the Prairie novels led to the removal of her name from a lifetime achievement award handed out annually by the American Library Association.

Follow us on Facebook or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

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Dr Seuss: Six books withdrawn over 'hurtful and wrong' imagery

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Six Dr Seuss books will no longer be published because of racially insensitive imagery, the company that preserves the author's legacy has said. Among the six children's titles being withdrawn are If I Ran the Zoo, Scrambled Eggs Super, McElligot's Pool and On Beyond Zebra!

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“Captain Underpants author withdraws book over ‘passive racism’”

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“Captain Underpants author withdraws book over ‘passive racism’”

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Captain Underpants author Dav Pilkey has apologised for "harmful racial stereotypes and passively racist imagery" in one of his graphic novels for children, which has been withdrawn by his publisher amid a surge in anti-Asian violence in the US.

The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future, first published in 2010, follows two cavemen who travel to the year 2222 and meet Master Wong, a martial arts instructor. Last week, publisher Scholastic announced that it would stop distributing the book and remove all mention of it from its website, saying it had "the full support" of Pilkey.

"Together, we recognise that this book perpetuates passive racism," Scholastic said. "We are deeply sorry for this serious mistake."

In a letter shared on his YouTube channel, Pilkey said he had "intended to showcase diversity, equality and nonviolent conflict resolution" in the graphic novel. "But this week it was brought to my attention that this book also contains harmful racial stereotypes and passively racist imagery," he wrote. "I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly apologise for this. It was and is wrong and harmful to my Asian readers, friends, and family, and to all Asian people."

"I hope that you, my readers, will forgive me, and learn from my mistake that even unintentional and passive stereotypes and racism are harmful to everyone," he wrote. "I apologise, and I pledge to do better."

The announcement was made soon after Billy Kim, a Korean-American father of two started a Change.org petition demanding an apology from Scholastic, citing stereotypes and Pilkey's depiction of Wong in his illustrations.

After the announcement, Kim wrote that he had spoken to a senior executive at Scholastic, then Pilkey, who apologised to him and his seven-year-old son.

While he was glad the book was withdrawn, Kim wrote, "the damage has been done".

"Every child who has read this book has been conditioned to accept this racist imagery as 'OK' or even funny," he wrote. "It is this type of passive racism that has contributed to the continued hate and prejudice experienced by Asian Americans on a daily basis."

In his apology, Pilkey said he would donate the advance and all royalties from The Adventures of Ook and Gluk to various organisations dedicated to tackling racism against Asian people, and to promoting diversity in publishing.

The decision came days after a man shot and killed eight people at three massage businesses in and near Atlanta, including six Asian women. Stop AAPI Hate, a group formed to document the abuse towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders during the pandemic, said in February that it had received reports of almost 3,800 incidents in less than a year. Community leaders and several Democrat politicians have blamed former president Donald Trump, and his history of racist rhetoric towards Chinese people and the coronavirus, for the increase in violence. Last week, the Anti-Defamation League found that Asian Americans had experienced the largest single rise in severe online abuse year-on-year in 2020.

Pilkey is not the only author to withdraw their own work this month. On 2 March, the estate of beloved children's author Dr Seuss announced that it would no longer allow the publication of six of his books, owing to depictions of race and ethnicities that were "hurtful and wrong".

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Captain Underpants author withdraws book over 'passive racism'

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Captain Underpants author Dav Pilkey has apologised for "harmful racial stereotypes and passively racist imagery" in one of his graphic novels for children, which has been withdrawn by his publisher amid a surge in anti-Asian violence in the US.

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"A Pandemic College Essay That Probably Won’t Get You Into Brown"

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"A Pandemic College Essay That Probably Won’t Get You Into Brown"

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Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts.

- The 2020-21 college-admissions Common Application.

COVID-19 is a very destructive respiratory disease that has caused much pain and suffering for millions of people around the world. Although my heart grieves for all the lives lost, each of us has suffered in our own unique ways. For me, that suffering took the form of not getting an opportunity to play the lead in our spring drama, which was, so tragically, cancelled.

For years, I have been working toward this goal. As a freshman, I auditioned for the role of Laura in the Tennessee Williams famous American drama "The Glass Menagerie." While I did not win the role, I find it very ironic that now, only three years later, we have all become aware that life is as precious as those fateful glass figurines due to COVID-19.

As a sophomore, my efforts to secure the role of the wrongly accused Desdemona in William Shakespeare's important play "Othello" were, once again, thwarted. Our drama coach, Ms. Wilkie, told me during the audition process that sophomores would be considered for leading roles, but the parts of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona all went to upperclassmen, even though none of them had taken private acting classes, as I have, with Leonard Michaels (Broadway credits include "Company," "Starlight Express," "Pump Boys and Dinettes"), at the Willows Dramatic Academy for Young Performers.

This experience taught me that authority figures do not always have "the answers," a lesson reinforced when Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a very respected medical adviser to many Presidents of the United States of America, said at first that masks should not be worn but then said that they should.

When discussing masks these days, it is impossible not to conjure in one's mind images of the famous "Comedy and Tragedy" masks, which were worn in ancient Greece during the classical period, from approximately 500 to 300 B.C.

Junior year was a turning point for my high-school theatrical career. I auditioned to portray Abigail Williams in "The Crucible," a play that on the surface purports to be about the Salem witch trials but is in fact a parable about McCarthyism, which was a terrible episode of American history that itself had a long-lasting impact on American history. Although I did not receive the part of Abigail Williams, I did play the pivotal role of Deputy Governor Danforth, who has several lines. Our school newspaper declared my presentation "dramatic" (review attached).

This year, my senior year, Ms. Wilkie said that we would be doing the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Our Town." Never could I have foreseen that "our town" would be affected by the respiratory disease only a few short months later.

Needless to say, I watched in horror in January and February of last year as news reports emerged from China about a new respiratory ailment that threatened to sicken people and shut down vast portions of the economy. In March, we received word that our very high school would be closing its mahogany doors. The curtain on my high-school theatrical career, tragically, fell forever, before I even had the chance to audition for the central role of the Stage Manager, which I planned to reinterpret as a strong, independent woman in the wake of #MeToo.

Perhaps Fate is the real Stage Manager.

The Stanislavski method of acting teaches us to incorporate our actual experiences into our Craft. Should I have the great honor of studying at the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University, I vow to incorporate the suffering of this past year into my Art as a tribute to all those, including myself, who have experienced such tremendous loss.

It is believed that the immortal bard, William Shakespeare, said, "Instead of weeping when a tragedy occurs in a songbird's life, it sings away its grief." My time at Brown will be my chance to "sing away grief," except that, unlike the tragedies of Shakespeare and other playwrights, my tragedy is real and therefore more tragic.

Please find attached a video of me in a scene from Herb Gardner's "A Thousand Clowns" (performed with J. Leonard Mitchell, member, Actors' Equity). ♦

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A Pandemic College Essay That Probably Won't Get You Into Brown

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Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. - The 2020-21 college-admissions Common Application. COVID-19 is a very destructive respiratory disease that has caused much pain and suffering for millions of people around the world.

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The Impact of Censoring Children's Books

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The Impact of Censoring Children's Books

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Posted on by Philip Nel

When I posted news of my "Censoring Children's Literature" course last month, several people (well, OK, one person ...maybe two) expressed an interest in hearing more about the course. So, given that Banned Books Week is coming up next week, here's an update. Having lately been examining two versions of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle (1920, 1988) and three versions of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964, 1973, 1998), we've been addressing this question: Do Bowdlerized texts alter the ideological assumptions of the original? The answer is more complicated than you might think.

Please see my revised, substantially expanded, NOTE . better inquiry into this subject - Chapter 2 ("How to Read Uncomfortably: Racism, Affect, and Classic Children's Books") of Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature and the Need for Diverse Books (Oxford UP, 2017), pp. 67-106.

One could make a case for "yes, they do alter the ideological assumptions of the original." The 1988 edition of Doctor Dolittle removes all references to skin color: "black man" becomes "man," and "white man" becomes "man" or "foreign man." Instead of tricking Prince Bumpo by preying on his desire to be white (in the original), Polynesia tricks Prince Bumpo by hypnotizing him (in the current version). In the 1973 edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas are no longer African Pygmies - they're from Loompaland. Illustrator Joseph Schindelman changes their colors from black to white, and current illustrator Quentin Blake keeps them white in his 1998 edition. Inasmuch as Willy Wonka's workers are human beings imported from another country, the whitened Oompa-Loompas remove the original book's implication that a person of European descent had enslaved people of African descent, and that the latter group had gladly accepted their new lot as his slaves. Similarly, inasmuch the colonialist impulses of Doctor Dolittle are now no longer so explicitly attached to skin color, the 1988 edition diminishes the overt racism of the original edition. The King of the Jolliginki may still throw childish temper tantrums and Prince Bumpo still may be easily duped, but in the new edition they're simply color-less victims of Lofting's satire.

The Oompa-Loompas, as illustrated by Joseph Schindelman, 1964

The Oompa-Loompas, as illustrated by Joseph Schindelman, 1973

The Oompa-Loompas, as illustrated by Quentin Blake, 1998

One could also make a case for "no, they do not alter the ideological assumptions of the original," claiming that the new versions instead more subtly encode the same racial and colonial messages of the original versions. After all, the Oompa-Loompas still live in "thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the entire world," and are still a "tribe" who do not learn English until they come to Britain. Even though the animals are now nonsensical ("hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible wicked whangdoodles"), it's not unreasonable for a child to assume that a "tribe" living in "thick jungles" are Africans living in Africa. And they still happily acquiesce to being shipped to England "in large packing cases with holes in them," and find life in a factory preferable to life in their native land. Though I don't agree with all of Eleanor Cameron's 1972 critique, the 1973 and 1998 versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory do not fundamentally contradict her concerns about "Willy Wonka's unfeeling attitude toward the Oompa-Loompas, their role as conveniences and devices to be used for Wonka's purposes, their being brought over from Africa for enforced servitude, and the fact that their situation is all a part of the fun and games."

Similarly, while the 1988 edition of Doctor Dolittle makes an effort to make race invisible, it does not make the original book's colonial ideologies vanish. Though now from "the Land of the Europeans" instead of "the Land of the White Men," Doctor Dolittle is an enlightened white European who goes to civilize the natives. The King of the Jolliginki may now be colorless, but he still lives in a palace "made of mud" in the jungle, and is foolish enough to be duped by a bird (Polynesia). Both he and his men are prone to childlike tantrums, which (even sans color) invokes the stereotype of Africans as childlike. And the monkeys still stand in for indigenous people. They are sick because of lack of proper sanitation (flies infect their food supply), and they have no history: "the monkeys had no history books of their own before Doctor Dolittle came to write them for them, they remember everything that happens by telling stories to their children." Removing skin color from the text and illustrations does not necessarily remove colonialism. As New York librarian Isabelle Suhl wrote of the Doctor Dolittle series in 1968, "These attitudes permeate the books ... and are reflected in the plots and actions of the stories, in the characterizations of both animals and people as well as in the language that the characters use. Editing out a few racial epithets will not, in my view, make the books less chauvinistic."

frontispiece, The Story of Doctor Dolittle, illustrated by Hugh Lofting, 1920

frontispiece, The Story of Doctor Dolittle, illustrated by Hugh Lofting, 1988

So, then. What do you do with these books? If you're persuaded by the idea that de-colorizing the books also removes ideology, then you can with clear conscience read the new versions to young people and encourage young people to read them. After all, Dahl himself revised Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and in so doing replaced Africa with the pleasantly nonsensical Loompaland. And Doctor Dolittle's kindness towards animals has inspired many advocates of animal rights. The 1988 edition uses the words of one such person, Jane Goodall, as a blurb on the back of the book: "Any child who is not given the opportunity to make the acquaintance of this rotund, kindly, and enthusiastic doctor/naturalist and all of his animal friends will miss out on something important." Along side of any troubling ideas, the Dolittle books contain much that may delight and instruct.

However, if you're concerned that the books simply dress up racial and colonial ideologies in different costumes, then you face a choice: (1) Discourage children from reading them, (2) Permit children to read only the Bowdlerized versions, (3) Allow children to read any version, original or Bowdlerized.

(1) Discussing revised editions of her own works, Anne Fine asks, "Which is the real version? Who's to say? The originals are the ones I would save from a fire. I rather hope the newer versions are the ones my readers would take with them to desert islands." I think what she means by this is that she hopes people re-read the revised editions, but thinks the originals should be preserved for posterity. In Should We Burn Babar?, Herbert Kohl uses a similar logic: "I wouldn't ban or burn Babar, or pull it from libraries. But buy it? No. I see no reason to go out of one's way to make Babar available to children, primarily because I don't see much critical reading going on in the schools and children don't need to be propagandized about colonialism, sexism, or racism." So, then, we might relegate Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Doctor Dolittle - whether original or revised - to the status of cultural artifact, historically significant but no longer read.

One problem with this approach is that it acts as a kind of covert censorship, a blacklist of sorts. It says: "oh, no, we're not banning the book. We're just not inviting it." So, if you're of a libertarian mindset, this response will not suffice.

(2) What about allowing children to read only the Bowdlerized versions, then? That might (in some measure) appease the person of libertarian leanings who nonetheless does not wish to collude in the replication of harmful ideologies. Yes, it might... if you believe that the Bowdlerized versions do - as Lori Mack, editor of the 1988 version of Doctor Dolittle, said of that volume - "preserve Hugh Lofting's style and spirit" but without "the offensive caricature." However, if you're a literary purist who believes in granting access to the original work or if you worry that these versions offer only a more subtle, insidious kind of propagandizing, then this approach will fail.

But will it? Books containing stereotypes (whether re-costumed or not) invite children to participate in that way of thinking, but children do not have to accept the invitation. They may resist. If a book's presentation of people of color does not conform to other images of people of color, then a child may dismiss the book as anomalous. As an outlier, it perhaps does not unconsciously shape their perceptions.

(3) If you believe in the child's potential to resist, then you might argue for granting access to the original work on the grounds that the egregiousness of the original's stereotypes will serve as a kind of "warning flag." In other words, one might argue that blunt offensiveness is less harmful than a subtler delivery of prejudices because the reader is more likely to reject the former. We can read a book and disagree with the book; encountering a book with racist imagery might be more likely to provoke our censure. Encountering a book in which that imagery has been cleaned up (even while leaving other underlying assumptions intact) might be less likely to provoke our censure. In sum, we could make the case that unvarnished prejudice serves as a better teaching tool.

One problem of this approach, however, is the disproportional burden it places on members of the stereotyped group. The white child (for example) who encounters Prince Bumpo or an Oompa-Loompa has the unearned privilege of not seeing people of her or his ethnicity being stereotyped. The African-American child (for example) does not have that privilege. This is not to say that prejudice lacks any ill consequences for the dominant group - a white child learning that he or she is more important, more central, can teach that child that dominating children (or adults) of color is acceptable behavior. Rather, this is to say that prejudice harms different groups in different ways.

What, then, is the solution? I'd be the first to acknowledge that there is no ideal solution. One could argue, for instance, that a "colorless" Doctor Dolittle rightly highlights the fact that race is a fiction: black, white, beige, yellow, etc. are pure fantasy. We're all members of the human race. On the other hand, one could counter that claim by noting that while race may be imaginary, people act on racial distinctions as if they were real: denying the social fact of race is a form of lying.

As an educator, I'm inclined to fall back on the (albeit imperfect) solution of reading troubling texts with young people, and talking with them about what they encounter. As Herb Kohl writes, "It is not developmentally inevitable that children will learn how to evaluate with sensitivity and intelligence what the adult world presents them. It is our responsibility, as critical and sensitive adults, to nurture the development of this sensibility in our children." Further, he notes, critical reading can be a source of both pleasure and power: "children quickly come to understand that critical sensibility strengthens them. It allows them to stand their ground .... It is a source of pleasure of well - of the joy that comes from feeling that one is living according to conviction and understanding."

As a negative state, innocence cannot be sustained indefinitely. As they grow up, children will gain experience and knowledge. Some of those experiences will hurt; some of that knowledge will make them sad. If we exclude troubling works from the discussion, then children are more likely to face sadness and pain on their own. It is, I think, better that we give them the tools with which to face prejudice-bearing literature. In doing so, we can help them learn to cope with a world that can be neither just nor fair. With this knowledge, perhaps we may also give them a source of power.

Categories Tags Censorship, Banned Books, Censorship, Children's Literature, Roald Dahl Children's Literature, Roald Dahl

Philip Nel

Philip Nel is Professor of English and Director of Kansas State University's Program in Children's Literature. His most recent books are Keywords for Children's Literature 2nd edition (2021, co-edited with Lissa Paul and Nina Christensen), Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature and the Need for Diverse Books (2017), Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature (2012), Tales for Little Rebels (2008, co-edited with Julia Mickenberg), The Annotated Cat (2007), and four volumes of Crockett Johnson's comic strip Barnaby (2013, 2014, 2016, 2020, all co-edited with Eric Reynolds).

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Can Censoring a Children's Book Remove Its Prejudices?

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Posted on by Philip Nel When I posted news of my "Censoring Children's Literature" course last month, several people (well, OK, one person ...maybe two) expressed an interest in hearing more about the course. So, given that Banned Books Week is coming up next week, here's an update.

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‘I’m fine with being called an activist’: Angie Thomas on her The Hate U Give prequel

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Angie Thomas talks about exploring violence and black fatherhood in her latest young adult novel – and why she’s hoping it won’t be banned

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A friend of ours went to the Beatrix Potter exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library and came back with this report:

I arrived at the Morgan in a torrential rainstorm, took off my rain gear, and headed for the main exhibition hall. This show is entitled "Beatrix Potter: Artist and Storyteller," but Potter was first and foremost a naturalist, and the walls of the Morgan testify to that. Beatrix Potter was born in 1866, and lived an unusually solitary life. Until her brother Bertram was born, in 1871, she had hardly ever seen another child. On summer holidays in Scotland and, later, in the Lake District, she and Bertram fell passionately in love with the natural world. In the main room you can see her precise and intensely focussed watercolor drawings of fossils, weasels, bats, butterflies, and fungi. (Fungi were her particular interest.) There are sketches of a dead thrush, and a drawing of sweet bay with faint arrows drawn in to show the angle of the light, and there are studies of pigs, mice, and lizards, and an anatomical drawing of a sheet-web spider, and details of insect legs and wings. A zoologist who had never heard of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" would feel perfectly at home at this show.

In a glass case is a sketchbook that Beatrix Potter kept at the age of eight. One page has a color study of caterpillars, and on the facing page, written in a childlike but well-developed hand, are some observations on their habits. In another case is another set of hand-written notes, on the subjects of Penicillium and other fungi, and cancer research-these written when Beatrix Potter was seventy.

Potter's biographer, Margaret Lane, tells us that she and Bertram, as children, boiled a dead fox in order to articulate its skeleton. At the Morgan is a letter written by Bertram, away at school, to Beatrix, who was then about twenty, that says, "I should advise you to boil that dog's skull in soda if you can get a pan." Blown-up photos of her as a young girl and a young woman show a sweet-faced person with a level gaze. A shot of her at sixty-five introduces a stout, rather formidable-looking woman in tweeds, clogs, and a felt hat. (By that time, she was a Lake District farmer and sheep breeder.) The clogs are under glass at the Morgan, and so is her paintbrush.

Potter's first commercial venture, undertaken when she was twenty-four, was a series of Christmas cards showing handsomely dressed rabbits engaged in social life-these are on display, too-but it was "Peter Rabbit" that made her famous. The book began as a letter to a little boy named Noel Moore, who was recuperating from an illness. "My dear Noel," the letter begins. "I don't know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter." This letter is on display, of course, and so are the original drawings from the book. These and all the original pictures for her books are a revelation. Generations of children and parents have loved these books, but no printing process, however advanced, does justice to the richness and clarity of the pictures.

Near a display of editions of "Peter Rabbit" in a number of languages, and in Braille, is a drawing that was tossed out after the fifth printing-a cheerful picture of Mrs. McGregor handing a nice-looking pie to an unseen Mr. McGregor. The pie, as the text makes clear, contains Peter's father, and Potter's publisher considered the picture too gruesome for children. But it seems to me that this deceptively sweet drawing gets to the heart of Beatrix Potter's charm. She never wrote down to children and she did not whitewash nature on their behalf. Scary things happen in her books. (Of course, funny things happen, too.) Mr. Jeremy Fisher goes fishing in the rain and is almost eaten by a trout; poor Tom Kitten is set upon by Anna Maria and Samuel Whiskers, who want to turn him into a roly-poly pudding. The show demonstrates that Beatrix Potter was a precise and serious little girl, and that when she grew up and made books for children she saw no need to lower her standards.

When it was time to leave, I put on my raincoat, and felt rather like Mr. Jeremy Fisher as I watched the rain come down in sheets. Also looking out was a woman carrying a toddler and holding a little boy by the hand. This reminded me that I had seen very few children at the show. I asked the woman how her children had liked it. "They loved it," she said. "I just wish the pictures had been hung lower." ♦

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A friend of ours went to the Beatrix Potter exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library and came back with this report: I arrived at the Morgan in a torrential rainstorm, took off my rain gear, and headed for the main exhibition hall.

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It's 28 years since Stephen Lawrence was killed in a racist attack. His brother Stuart recommends books about racism, to help you educate yourself and your family.

To mark Stephen Lawrence Day, Stephen's brother Stuart Lawrence has recommended five books about racism and race for young people.

His recommendations will help anyone better understand racism, talk about race with your family and offer suggestions about how to be a better ally.

Stephen Lawrence Day takes place on April 22 and is a national day of commemoration for Stuart's brother who was killed in a racially-motivated attack in 1993.

Books about racism, recommended by Stuart Lawrence

Black and British by David Olusoga

All the stuff that we think that we know about British history has other layers to it. And this book allows us to talk about that. I've been reading this book with my son. It was great to be able to start a conversation with him about these sorts of things.

This Book Is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell and Aurelia Durand

I've met so many people who want to say to me, 'I've got a black mate and I can understand the struggle.' Cool. I don't need to know you got a black mate. All I really need people to say is, I'm an anti-racist.

This book is a great way to get young people to understand that it's okay to talk about these issues. And if you don't know something, it's okay to learn about stuff as well.

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

This is one of the first books about children of colour that I could find to talk about. I remember my mum buying this for my sister, so this is quite a personal book to me.

Dream Big! Heroes Who Dared to be Bold by Sally Morgan

This book talks about fearless people who have stood up and put themselves out to be counted. Mo Farah is in there, David Olusoga is in there. It was really inspiring to see a book that shows different representation in a positive light.

Stories for Boys Who Dare to be Different by Ben Brooks

I think any book that I want you to talk about around race, equality, diversity, inclusion has to celebrate being different. Those differences make the world so much more beautiful and a better place.
Stuart Lawrence's book Silence is Not an Option: You Can Impact the World for Change is out now (Scholastic, £14.99).

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Books about racism: Recommendations to mark Stephen Lawrence Day | Stuart Lawrence

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It's 28 years since Stephen Lawrence was killed in a racist attack. His brother Stuart recommends books about racism, to help you educate yourself and your family. To mark Stephen Lawrence Day, Stephen's brother Stuart Lawrence has recommended five books about racism and race for young people.

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any of us know that "brown bread" is Cockney rhyming slang for dead, "china plate" for mate, and "bubble bath" for laugh. But how many know the meaning of the phrases? The historic native wit of this east end community (and its followers from around the world) often has an interesting logic to its phrases. Rather than simply a rhyming association, the slang reflects meaning in the expressions themselves. Here's a guide to the most commonly-used Cockney rhyming slang:

To the Cockney, the phrase "steps and stairs" describes the idea of gradation. Every good costermonger has skill in displaying the front of his stall. The selected samples of fruit and vegetables are expertly graded in "steps and stairs". Apples and pears, when in season, are common on each barrow and, when polished, create an arresting display.

As gravy was plentiful at mealtimes in both services.

Suggestive of the softness of the foods on which babies are fed.

As bees are the epitome of work, work produces money, the possession of which is sweet.

A term that enjoyed a fresh lease of life during the second world war and the food-rationing period.

Policeman. There are a possible pair of inferences: to bottle meaning to enclose and a stopper meaning one who holds another back from a course of action.

As a box of toys, particularly a new one given as a present at Christmas time, causes a great deal of noise to be made.

Since people sentenced to that 19th century punishment could not keep still for a second.

Influenced by the extreme displays that adolescents are inclined to perform on a bicycle, especially when showing off.

Since both coal and coke used to be supplied in large blocks that had to be broken down before their use.

Sometimes known as "Doggett's" as watermen who possessed the Doggett Coat and Badge could charge higher fares than those without.

An effeminate man, suggestive either by their neatness of dress, or by "powder puff".

To get into serious trouble. Suggested by the effect of a flower pot dropped from a window above on to someone below.

Which was often stolen during packed railway stations in the holiday season.

Applying only to the wife who is cut off from the parental support and carried (provided for) by her husband.

Many imported safety matches were of poor quality and often failed to ignite when scratched against the side of the box.

A term often used by people working at nighttime.

Referring not just to the famous London store, but to "derry" as to "have a derry on" meaning to dislike, referring to "down on", meaning prejudiced against, from Derry Down in Ireland.

The drink. Based on the imploring of ladies who, when asked to "have another", replied that they "didn't ought".

Short for the cigarette Woodbines which indirectly played their part in the victory of the first world war.

A duck when diving is hidden beneath the pond's surface and to duck is to avoid a blow by a quick dropping movement.

Used when children have created a huge amount of mess.

As flower buyers have to keep very early hours to buy their produce at Covent Garden flower market.

As water is part of the fisherman's landscape.

Describing how a social get-together should be.

As no cake can be eaten that has not been given (by a shopkeeper) and taken. Cake also means money, as in "a cake of notes" that also needs to be given and taken.

Referring to the speed required to run to such a refuge and the fact they were often underground.

As in the nose through which people both inhale and exhale.

Referring to the London County Council's notice to the effect that a bell was rung and the gates locked at dusk.

Referring to the risk caused in disturbing the father of the household when he was taking his afternoon nap in an armchair "of a Sunday".

Referring to a late 19th century act of daring where a performer strapped to a wheel whizzed round on a coiled track.

Which to receive sometimes can be very cold comfort.

In reference to the morning after the night before.

The market stall holders felt that the sooner the boy stopped reading books and gained practical experience the better.

In the sterling sense. Referring to the saying that "money was made round to go round".

Yiddish words for good luck and good health respectively, referring to the occupation ofdoor-to-door salesman (these are two of his six requirements, the other four being: good looks, temper, voice and manners).

As in the idea of "so near and yet so far" relating to a busy pub with a throng of waiting customers.

Meaning a cigarette and referring to its soiled state when smokers are employed in a mucky profession.

Used of temporarily penniless housewives.

A magistrate. In heady days many did see the "beak" once a week as a result of excessive partying on a Saturday night.

A trick of confidence which if successful made for easy money.

A cynical reference to the bog standard level of menu of the average mess for the "other ranks".

For which a long indulgence can have a considerable effect upon the skin.

Both a matter of pleasure for gardeners and pain for sufferers from rheumatism.

Riding breeches which were worn in the 19th century by those with either wealth or a title.

The appearance of dice rolling is similar to rodents running.

Suggestive of the busy handling of coins.

The connection is very apt.

As in that due to a long-serving, retired soldier.

Suggestive of its smoothness.

Implying a situation of penury and hence the lack of a bed.

The appearance of rough white marble resembles a sugar lump and being a soft stone (when newly quarried) it is easy (ie sweet) to work with.

A horse racing term relating to the "tic tac" signals made by bookmakers.

The connection is very apt.

The connection is very apt.

Used exclusively in reference to a beggar's tale.

In the sense both of without cost, implying a part of the good time coming, and without restraint, as in the release from prison.

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The ultimate guide to Cockney rhyming slang

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any of us know that "brown bread" is Cockney rhyming slang for dead, "china plate" for mate, and "bubble bath" for laugh. But how many know the meaning of the phrases? The historic native wit of this east end community (and its followers from around the world) often has an interesting logic to its phrases.

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here's a child who exists only in fiction, specifically modern fiction aimed at six-year-old girls. Her name, invariably, ends in a "y". Her tone is perky - or "sassy", as reviewers occasionally describe it - her speech is arch, and her humour is self-referential. "How many minutes is shortly?" muses one such heroine, from a franchise targeted at the American first grader. "Is it one minute or eight minutes or eleven minutes? On account of it's one minute, I can wait, probably. But eleven minutes would be out of the question." No six-year-old I know talks like this.

Bad writing ranges across every genre, but bad writing for children, when it falls along uniform lines, can be a test of how childhood itself is perceived. This fact was particularly evident this week, after the death of Beverly Cleary, the beloved American children's author who died in California at the age of 104. I say "beloved"; her books, which date from the mid-1950s onwards, had no reach in the UK when I was growing up, and coverage of her death in the US was the first time I had heard of her. On a friend's fervent recommendation, I picked up Beezus and Ramona from the library, and prepared to apply it to my children.

It's a risky business, trying to mould one's kids' tastes. You have to swallow a lot of disappointment. Over the last year, I've ploughed through most of Roald Dahl with my kids, to a more or less warm reception; I've seen Charlotte's Web roundly rejected; I've nudged them towards mandatory Judy Blume-worship with Freckle Juice (a win, thank God). And I've bombed with Harriet the Spy. In between these adored books of my childhood, we have started and abandoned a lot of unbelievably bad fiction.

Bad used to mean cliche, a charge which, when I was a child, fell squarely on the shoulders of Enid Blyton. Looking back, this seems unfair. Blyton is moralising, but the delivery of those lessons was always so thrilling, most of the piety burned off. When I look back on Malory Towers, a series I read hundreds of times, it amazes me how violent the storylines were, how chock-full of spite and comeuppance. The downfall of Mavis, who had the temerity to be vain about her singing voice; the downfall of Amanda, who thought she could swim in the Olympics; the epic, six-novel arc of the grudge-match between Gwendoline Mary and Alicia. These people were as real to me as my own friends.

The reason for this, I suspect, is that however clunky adults considered Blyton's prose, she took the inner lives of her heroines extremely seriously. I flip through the Cleary novel and it's a similar story. The characters are not winking at the reader, nor, as is more often the case in modern kids' fiction, winking over the reader to their parent, a tone that has been imported directly from tween culture TV. On Disney and Nickelodeon, kids speak exclusively in italics, tiny, ironic avatars for their adult creators. It's a tone so prevalent it occasionally jumps into real life. A few years ago, I witnessed an eight-year-old, mid-meltdown, yell at her dad with one eye on her audience: "You're ruining my childhood!" It still makes me shudder.

I would put up with even this, the bouncy, perky tone of these books, if they didn't commit a much greater sin, which is to be almost unbearably boring. After two pages of a Nancy Drew reboot, in which the heroine, reimagined as a feisty eight-year-old who likes to hang out at the beauty salon with her friends, my kids are climbing the wall. (The exception is Abby Hanlon's Dory Fantasmagory series, in which the six-year-old heroine is neither cute nor "feisty", but encounters trouble in recognisable forms: persecuted by her siblings, neglected by her well-meaning but short-tempered parents and rude in a way that involves pretending to be a dog, not engaging in sarcastic backchat with her teacher.)

One night this week, we cracked open the Beverly Cleary. My children, attention spans degraded after a year on their iPads, regard the page of dense text and start to complain. "We'll just do two pages!" I say brightly. We read about Beezus Quimby and her four-year-old sister, Ramona, who rides around on her tricycle while blowing a mouth organ. We learn that Beezus finds her annoying. We watch as she bribes Ramona to pipe down by reading her a book, then persuades her little sister to come with her to the library to find something more interesting. Through patient, careful accumulation of detail, something real starts to cohere. After two pages, I make to close the book. Nonchalantly, as if pursuing no particular outcome, my daughter says: "It's actually not that bad. Keep reading."

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Forget about irony, witty writing is all it takes to capture a child's imagination | Emma Brockes

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here's a child who exists only in fiction, specifically modern fiction aimed at six-year-old girls. Her name, invariably, ends in a "y". Her tone is perky - or "sassy", as reviewers occasionally describe it - her speech is arch, and her humour is self-referential. "How many minutes is shortly?"

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Want top speak like a Victorian? James Redding Ware, the pen name of writer Andrew Forrester, documented slang English terms of that perverted period in British history in his book Passing English of the Victorian era, a dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase.

"Thousands of words and phrases in existence in 1870 have drifted away, or changed their forms, or been absorbed, while as many have been added or are being added," he writes in the book's introduction. "'Passing English' ripples from countless sources, forming a river of new language which has its tide and its ebb, while its current brings down new ideas and carries away those that have dribbled out of fashion."

Mental Floss has listed a few:

1. AFTERNOONIFIED

A society word meaning "smart." Forrester demonstrates the usage: "The goods are not 'afternoonified' enough for me."

2. ARFARFAN'ARF

A figure of speech used to describe drunken men. "He's very arf'arf'an'arf," Forrester writes, "meaning he has had many 'arfs,'" or half-pints of booze.

3. BACK SLANG IT

Thieves used this term to indicate that they wanted "to go out the back way."

4. BAGS O' MYSTERY

An 1850 term for sausages, "because no man but the maker knows what is in them. ... The 'bag' refers to the gut which contained the chopped meat."

5. BANG UP TO THE ELEPHANT

This phrase originated in London in 1882, and means "perfect, complete, unapproachable."

6. BATTY-FANG

Low London phrase meaning "to thrash thoroughly," possibly from the French battre a fin.

7. BENJO

Nineteenth century sailor slang for "A riotous holiday, a noisy day in the streets."

8. BOW WOW MUTTON

A naval term referring to meat so bad "it might be dog flesh."

9. BRICKY

Brave or fearless. "Adroit after the manner of a brick," Forrester writes, "said even of the other sex, 'What a bricky girl she is.'"

10. BUBBLE AROUND

A verbal attack, generally made via the press. Forrester cites The Golden Butterfly: "I will back a first-class British subject for bubbling around against all humanity."

11. BUTTER UPON BACON

Extravagance. Too much extravagance. "Are you going to put lace over the feather, isn't that rather butter upon bacon?"

12. CAT-LAP

A London society term for tea and coffee "used scornfully by drinkers of beer and strong waters ... in club-life is one of the more ignominious names given to champagne by men who prefer stronger liquors."

13. CHURCH-BELL

A talkative woman.

14. CHUCKABOO

A nickname given to a close friend.

15. COLLIE SHANGLES

Quarrels. A term from Queen Victoria's journal, More Leaves, published in 1884: "At five minutes to eleven rode off with Beatrice, good Sharp going with us, and having occasional collie shangles (a Scottish word for quarrels or rows, but taken from fights between dogs) with collies when we came near cottages."

16. COP A MOUSE

To get a black eye. "Cop in this sense is to catch or suffer," Forrester writers, "while the colour of the obligation at its worst suggests the colour and size of the innocent animal named."

17. DADDLES

A delightful way to refer to your rather boring hands.

18. DAMFINO

This creative cuss is a contraction of "damned if I know."

19. DIZZY AGE

A phrase meaning "elderly," because it "makes the spectator giddy to think of the victim's years." The term is usually refers to "a maiden or other woman canvassed by other maiden ladies or others."

20. DOING THE BEAR

"Courting that involves hugging."

21. DON'T SELL ME A DOG

Popular until 1870, this phrase meant "Don't lie to me!" Apparently, people who sold dogs back in the day were prone to trying to pass off mutts as purebreds.

22. DOOR-KNOCKER

A type of beard "formed by the cheeks and chin being shaved leaving a chain of hair under the chin, and upon each side of mouth forming with moustache something like a door-knocker."

23. ENTHUZIMUZZY

"Satirical reference to enthusiasm." Created by Braham the terror, whoever that is.

24. FIFTEEN PUZZLE

Not the game you might be familiar with, but a term meaning complete and absolute confusion.

25. FLY RINK

An 1875 term for a polished bald head.

26. GAL-SNEAKER

An 1870 term for "a man devoted to seduction."

27. GAS-PIPES

A term for especially tight pants.

28. GIGGLEMUG

"An habitually smiling face."

29. GOT THE MORBS

Use of this 1880 phrase indicated temporary melancholy.

30. HALF-RATS

Partially intoxicated.

31. JAMMIEST BITS OF JAM

"Absolutely perfect young females," circa 1883.

32. KRUGER-SPOOF

Lying, from 1896.

33. MAD AS HOPS

Excitable.

34. MAFFICKING

An excellent word that means getting rowdy in the streets.

35. MAKE A STUFFED BIRD LAUGH

"Absolutely preposterous."

36. MEATER

A street term meaning coward.

37. MIND THE GREASE

When walking or otherwise getting around, you could ask people to let you pass, please. Or you could ask them to mind the grease, which meant the same thing to Victorians.

38. MUTTON SHUNTER

This 1883 term for a policeman is so much better than "pig."

39. NANTY NARKING

A tavern term, popular from 1800 to 1840, that meant great fun.

40. NOSE BAGGER

Someone who takes a day trip to the beach. He brings his own provisions and doesn't contribute at all to the resort he's visiting.

41. NOT UP TO DICK

Not well.

42. ORF CHUMP

No appetite.

43. PARISH PICK-AXE

A prominent nose.

44. PODSNAPPERY

This term, Forrester writers, describes a person with a "wilful determination to ignore the objectionable or inconvenient, at the same time assuming airs of superior virtue and noble resignation."

45. POKED UP

Embarrassed.

46. POWDERING HAIR

An 18th century tavern term that means "getting drunk."

47. RAIN NAPPER

An umbrella.

48. SAUCE-BOX

The mouth.

49. SHAKE A FLANNIN

Why say you're going to fight when you could say you're going to shake a flannin instead?

50. SHOOT INTO THE BROWN

To fail. According to Forrester, "The phrase takes its rise from rifle practice, where the queer shot misses the black and white target altogether, and shoots into the brown i.e., the earth butt."

51. SKILAMALINK

Secret, shady, doubtful.

52. SMOTHERING A PARROT

Drinking a glass of absinthe neat; named for the green color of the booze.

53. SUGGESTIONIZE

A legal term from 1889 meaning "to prompt."

54. TAKE THE EGG

To win.

55. UMBLE-CUM-STUMBLE

According to Forrester, this low class phrase means "thoroughly understood."

56. WHOOPERUPS

A term meaning "inferior, noisy singers" that could be used liberally today during karaoke sessions.

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Not Up To Dick: 100 Wonderful Victorian Slang Words You Should Be Using - Flashbak

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Want top speak like a Victorian? James Redding Ware, the pen name of writer Andrew Forrester, documented slang English terms of that perverted period in British history in his book Passing English of the Victorian era, a dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase...

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With a panel of celebrated authors—including Jason Reynolds and Jenny Han—TIME presents the most influential YA books

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o men learn from women? Often. Do they admit it publicly? Rarely, even today. Let's stick to literature. No matter how hard I try, I can't think of many male writers who have said that they were in any way indebted to the work of a woman writer. Among Italians only one comes to mind, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of The Leopard, who wrote that he had benefited from reading Virginia Woolf. I could list quite a few great male writers who either belittle their female colleagues, or attribute to them a capacity only to write banal, trifling stories - of marriage, children, love affairs; cheap romances and sentimental novels.

Recently, things have been changing, but not very much. For example, when some renowned male writer says in private, or in public, that we women writers are good, I would like to ask: are we as good as you, better than you, or good only within the context of books written by women? That is, have we broken out of the literary women's space we are confined to (and not only by the market)? Or have we overturned literature in general and its values?

In other words, if you are a male writer who reads me and finds me good, are you paying me a generous compliment of the sort paid to a female student who has learned her lesson well? Or are you willing to admit that, today, you can learn from writing by women as much as we women have learned - and are learning, reading over the centuries - from writing by men?

Here, in my opinion, things get complicated. Plenty of cultivated men are willing to praise us for our capacity to stir the emotions (and what does a woman do well, traditionally, if not stir the emotions and make the hours pass pleasantly?). But these men keep for themselves the literature that revolutionises, that ventures into minefields, that digs into political confrontation or addresses heroic struggles with power. The courage to go through the world fighting with words and deeds, street by street, remains in many people's imagination the province of male intellectuals. Women, meanwhile, are still assigned to the balcony, from where they may contemplate life passing by and describe it in tremulous words.

Many women who write, in every part of the world, in every field, do so with lucidity, with a pitiless gaze, with courage, with no concession to sentimentality. A widespread female intelligence that produces writing of a high literary quality has become manifest. But the cliche dies hard: we are emotional; we please. Men make great literature and teach fearlessly, through their words and deeds, how all the evil in the world should yield to good.

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This is a great time for writing by women - so why are we still considered second-rate?

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o men learn from women? Often. Do they admit it publicly? Rarely, even today. Let's stick to literature. No matter how hard I try, I can't think of many male writers who have said that they were in any way indebted to the work of a woman writer.

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Antigrams are antonymous anagrams. Anagrams are words or phrases created by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. An anagram becomes an antigram when it is opposite in meaning to the original word or phrase.

Making antigrams can be a funny exercise for ESL learners. In the strange world of antigrams evangelists become evil's agents, funeral becomes real fun, festival becomes evil fast, violence turns into nice love, and mother-in-law becomes Hitler woman. Examples of antigrams can be found in literature as well as in common discourse. Perfect antigrams have been created by the wittiest of minds and the following is a list of them.
Anagrams of the Names of Celebrities

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Antigrams are antonymous anagrams. Anagrams are words or phrases created by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. An anagram becomes an antigram when it is opposite in meaning to the original word or phrase. Making antigrams can be a funny exercise for ESL learners.

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"Waterstones prize winner Elle McNicoll: 'I never saw autistic girls in books'"

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"Waterstones prize winner Elle McNicoll: 'I never saw autistic girls in books'"

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hen Scottish author Elle McNicoll was first trying to enter the publishing world, she was repeatedly told that people didn't want to read about an autistic heroine. "In job interviews, I was saying that I wanted to see more books with disabled characters in them that were not traumatic, boring or educational, but fun and full of life. A lot of the reactions were, 'Waterstones don't like books like that'," she says.

Now McNicoll's debut novel A Kind of Spark has won the Waterstones children's book prize. Published by tiny independent Knights Of, it follows Addie, an 11-year-old autistic girl, as she campaigns for a memorial to the witch trials that took place in her Scottish village. The novel has been praised by Waterstones' booksellers as "eye opening, heart-wrenching, sad [and] inspiring".

McNicoll, who is autistic herself, wasn't looking for a book deal when she first met Knights Of; she was offering her services as a proofreader for books that involved disability. "The meeting started with me venting about job interviews that had been very soul destroying," she says. "And they said, 'We don't have an autistic character, if you would like to write one'."

By then, McNicoll had already written two thirds of A Kind of Spark, with Addie shaped by her frustrations with publishers. "I'd been working on a draft for a couple of years, but I was missing the main character. As I was going to these interviews and getting more and more disheartened, Addie started to form. She was definitely born out of a kind of defiance - the more that the industry pushed back, the stronger she got," she says.

She is a character McNicoll would have loved to read as a child: "I was a voracious reader, but I never saw the word autistic written in a book, or autistic girls. We had [Mark Haddon's] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but we never saw neurodivergent girls."

Published last summer, A Kind of Spark has already won the Blue Peter prize for best story, and was named as Blackwell's book of 2020. Now Waterstones booksellers have picked it as the overall winner of their £5,000 children's books prize, with the chain's children's buyer, Florentyna Martin, calling McNicoll "undoubtedly an outstanding new talent in children's books [who] will inspire readers young and old for generations to come".

"We have fallen in love with Addie, whose courage and determination are a guiding light, often reminding the world that kindness must prevail wherever we go," added Martin.

McNicoll called her win "completely staggering". "I will never say 'I can't' again," she says.

Previous recipients of the award, which is unique in that it is voted for solely by booksellers, include Angie Thomas, Katherine Rundell and Rob Biddulph.

McNicoll's A Kind of Spark was up against Bethan Stevens's "pitch-perfect and extremely entertaining" The Grumpy Fairies, which won the prize's illustrated books category, and Darren Charlton's Wranglestone, winner of the prize's older readers category. A love story about two boys set in a post-apocalyptic America overrun by the undead, Wranglestone was described by booksellers as "epic, eerie and seriously scary".

Charlton said he hoped his win would prove "there is a readiness in readers for the LGBTQ+ experience to expand into genres still dominated by their heterosexual counterparts."

"Ultimately, this is a win for LGBTQ+ teenagers by showing you that your story can be for the many and not just the few," he said. "I am so touched and so very grateful that my two boys ever found such an open-hearted tribe to champion them."

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Waterstones prize winner Elle McNicoll: 'I never saw autistic girls in books'

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hen Scottish author Elle McNicoll was first trying to enter the publishing world, she was repeatedly told that people didn't want to read about an autistic heroine. "In job interviews, I was saying that I wanted to see more books with disabled characters in them that were not traumatic, boring or educational, but fun and full of life.

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On 14 November 1922 the BBC broadcast its first radio report to the nation. We can't listen to it because it was not recorded, but we know this: the broadcast was read in flawless received pronunciation (RP), commonly known as the Queen's English. It is considered to be the language of elites, power and royalty.

For many years, the BBC would only allow RP accents to appear on its airwaves. That this accent became synonymous with the voice of a nation had clear connotations. RP was trusted, authoritarian and sincere. Fortunately, the BBC now allows all sorts of regional accents on its broadcasts - and even encourages it, aiming to both represent the diverse audience the BBC has and to draw new people in.

While the BBC no longer broadcasts only in RP, it turns out that the bias that once existed for it is still ripe in society today. Our accents can provide a window into our social backgrounds - and our biases. Our partialities can be so strong that they even affect our perception of who is, or is not, trustworthy.

Humans are very quick to judge a person based on accents, and are often unaware we do so. "Accent can trigger social categorisation in a prompt, automatic, and occasionally unconscious manner," says Ze Wang of the University of Central Florida. We often can identify a person's accent as soon they say hello.

Our trust for certain accent starts extremely young. There is evidence to show that affinity for language even starts before birth. We know for instance that babies prefer the language they heard most while in the womb. In one study, researchers repeatedly played a made-up word while women were pregnant. When the babies were born, brain scans showed that only babies who had heard this word responded to it.

By the time babies are several months old, they can differentiate between languages and dialects. Early on, babies start to have an affinity for others who speak their native language. In one 2007 Harvard University experiment, babies watched two people speak on a screen, one in a familiar tongue and one that was foreign. One on-screen speaker then offered the babies a toy - which magically popped up from behind the screen at the same time. The babies preferred the toy given by the person who spoke their native language and accent.

"Right away in the first year of life babies are starting to show this social preference - moving towards someone who speaks in a way that's familiar to them," says the study's lead researcher Katherine Kinzler, now at Cornell University.

To Kinzler, accents are under-studied. They tie us to our identity in a similar way that our gender and race does. For some children, accent can be a more powerful indicator of group identity than race, she has found. When five-year-olds were shown pictures of either black or white children, they preferred those who were the same race. At this age, they don't have the motivation to control prejudice in the way adults do, says Kinzler.

But when colour was pitted against accent, the children preferred those who shared their accent - even if they were of a different race.

This work reveals that in our early years, the accents we trust most are those which sound familiar. It makes sense that we trust somebody who speaks like us, says Kinzler; they are likely to know more information about your own community.

In another study, she found that children trust native speakers better than they do foreign-accented speakers.

As children grow up they become more attuned to the social status or stereotypes that have been glued on to various accents. RP English is said to sound posh and powerful, whereas people who speak Cockney English, the accent of working-class Londoners, often experience prejudice. The Birmingham accent fares even worse - which could be the result of TV shows which depicted its residents as "slow, lazy and thick", researchers wrote. Indeed, one poll found the Birmingham accent least attractive but rated Irish as having the nicest twang.
(Take our quiz on British accents to find out which part of Britain you speak most like - even if you aren't British.)

When it comes to trusting accents, there seem to be two things at play. First, an accent represents part of your identity. But as you get older this might clash with an accent you aspire to sound more like, say one that is deemed more prestigious, or less stuck-up. One 2013 poll of more than 4,000 people found RP and Devon accents the most trustworthy, while the least trustworthy was deemed to be Liverpudlian (from Liverpool). The Cockney accent came a close second for untrustworthiness. These accents scored similarly when asked about intelligence.

These are snapshot results, though. In real life, trust in accents can change over time depending on our social circles and daily relationships. A study by Ilaria Torre of Plymouth University found that trust in an accent can change depending on first impressions and judgements. In her study, participants heard either a standard southern English accent or a lesser-trusted Liverpudlian accent. If a person who spoke in the 'trustworthy'' accent then went onto behave fairly - by returning a generous monetary investment, for example - then this first impression of trustworthiness increased.

If, however, a person spoke with the 'trusted' accent and they went on to behave in an untrustworthy manner, they were deemed even less trustworthy than the person who had both an 'untrustworthy' accent and behaviour. The study participants "were punishing them, so to speak, for not living up to the participants' expectations," says Torre. The opposite happened, too: those who were judged as untrustworthy but acted nicely were able to undo negative preconceptions. In other words, the 'untrustworthy'-sounding Liverpudlians (apologies, any readers from Liverpool) were redeemed when they behaved in a desirable way.

This reveals something Torre feels has been overlooked - our accent biases can be reduced by contact with individuals we initially think sound suspicious. "By interacting with speakers of many different accents we might realise our biases are unfounded and our trustworthy perception of that accent can change as well," she says.

The media plays a role too. Upmarket grocer Marks & Spencer frequently has a soothing, RP voice-over on its adverts, for example, while the more budget brand Iceland often featured former popstar Kerry Katona, who grew up in Warrington, a town between Manchester and Liverpool - until she was kicked off their adverts because of an alleged drug problem.

In the UK, some school teachers even have been asked to modify their accents to sound less regional. Of course, says the University of Manchester's Alexander Baratta, while some people find regional accents to sound less educated, others think they sound more in-touch, sincere and friendly and that posh accents are more cold or arrogant. (This may be one reason why the Queen has been toning down her RP voice throughout the decades.) Some studies have found that people from Yorkshire seem to sound more honest than Londoners, for instance.

Accent biases are common against foreign accents too. A study led by Ze Wang showed that US participants trusted British accents more than Indian accents. "People often have negative bias toward non-standard accents, particularly those with disadvantaged and low-prestige minority groups," she says. For instance, she found that those with Mexican or Greek accents were perceived as less intelligent or professional than those who speak standard US English.

Another study showed that our accents can even limit our professional opportunities. Regional German accents were seen as less desirable than standard German, despite the same being said. But in Switzerland people preferred their surgeon to have a regional accent than a "standard" German one, perhaps because Swiss German is the most commonly spoken dialect.

When it comes to trusting accents, we depend both on what we know and on what society has conditioned us to aspire to. But if we all took a moment to stop and really listen to each other, we might learn to love the eclectic and varied accents that make up our multicultural world... rather than basing our trust on implicit biases that we acquire even before birth.
Melissa Hogenboom is BBC Future's staff writer. She is @melissasuzanneh on twitter.
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On 14 November 1922 the BBC broadcast its first radio report to the nation. We can't listen to it because it was not recorded, but we know this: the broadcast was read in flawless received pronunciation (RP), commonly known as the Queen's English. It is considered to be the language of elites, power and royalty.

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"Why Does Everyone Talk like They're in a Cult?"

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"Why Does Everyone Talk like They're in a Cult?"

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In late 2020, a time of cultural high-highs and low-lows (Trump would soon be out of office, but the COVID pandemic was wreaking havoc), my Instagram algorithm could not have been more confused. Locked away in my bedroom like I'd been all year, looping a playlist of Mariah Carey Christmas music (an attempt at *joy*), I found myself going Jack-Nicholson-in- The-Shining-style mad, as I finished the final draft of , my new nonfiction book about the language of "cults," from Scientology to SoulCycle. Amid all the QAnoners, multi-level marketing recruiters, impassioned start-ups, and other fanatical fringe groups I'd been analyzing (read: social media stalking) over the past year, my Explore page couldn't seem to tell whether I was genuinely interested in shopping for Flat Earth T-shirts while entertaining the theory that 5G cell phone towers were responsible for the coronavirus, or just anthropologically interested. Either way, I was eyeballs deep in the peculiar universe of shady social media gurus, when I thumbed past the perfect case study in contemporary cult language: an account called @activationvibration.

The voice behind the account is Heather Hoffman, a blue-eyed 20-something with a look that reads part beauty influencer, part religious prophet-picture ornate gold piercings and appropriative face jewels, juxtaposed with eyelash extensions and trendy tie-dye bralettes. Heather's ultra-produced images, featuring rainbow lens flares and jewel-tone lotus flowers, accompany affirmations just vague enough to sound profound: "As you advance, you assist the collective." "Choose to be 'in peace' In order: to experience peace." "Dimensions: are Universal Constants which are separated by maintaining an individual constant vibration-It is us, who change in frequency." (Her punctuation alone is a cosmic mystery.) In one IGTV video, Heather lounges before a mandala tapestry sermonizing that COVID-19 was caused by government "fear propaganda" and that protecting yourself means "deactivating" your "matrix grid of fear" so as not to pollute the "divine order." Heather attests she has been reincarnated precisely to cure us lowly humans of such ailments through her ability to access "Source" (God) and other spiritual "realms" available only to her, since everyone else has fallen victim to a "program." To tap into her transcendent knowhow, just sign up for one of her online programs, like the "Cellular Activation Course-Upgrade Your DNA" for $144.44, or, for her most exclusive wisdom, pony up $4,444 for private coaching.

Heather's lengthy, convoluted captions are written in a dialect of New Age-speak so cryptic that insiders want to like, comment, and share, while outsiders can't help but keep scrolling to find out what her beliefs actually are: "integrating potent codes," "quantum transformation," "divine alignment," "energy matrices, grids, and frequencies."

This way of speaking is inscrutable, but it's also oddly familiar. I've heard many of Heather's frequently used words - like, "holistic," "synergy," "actualize," "integrate," "frequencies," "vibrations," "alignment," "paradigm shift," "organic," "intentional" - in a very different context: my old media start-up job. "Can we make sure we're aligned on that initiative?" "There's an ongoing paradigm shift in the wellness space." You've probably come across similar terms, perhaps arranged in slightly different linguistic shapes; this quasi-mystical glossary has found its way into the mouths of everyone from Peloton instructors ("Set your intention for this class, and awaken!") to millennial preachers at trendy Christian megachurches, like Hillsong ("This is a missional church for authentic, intentional Christ followers"). Hell, just the other day, I entered a West Hollywood salon to procure my first haircut in a year, and my stylist told me my "vibration" had "upgraded" since the last time she saw me.

Clearly, a new metaphysical dialect has emerged, and it's swiftly taken over all kinds of social, spiritual, and professional spaces - not just the cultier corners of Instagram, but also our corporate offices, diet and fitness industries, and beyond. But... why? Where did this New Age language come from? How come it's blowing up in such a major way right now? And, can it actually be dangerous?

Language change and cultural change have always gone hand-in-hand, and this is by no means the "dawn" of New Age vernacular in the United States. We saw something similar in the 1960s and '70s, another era of American socio-political turbulence. At the time, Americans were craving community and spirituality more than ever, but were resisting traditional religious organizations, so, new "alternative" movements - everything from Christian offshoots like Jews for Jesus to pseudo-Buddhist groups like Shambhala to sci-fi-type fellowships like Scientology - arose to fill the void. Like now, spiritual seekers of the time were mostly young, white, countercultural types who felt that mainstream church, government, and healthcare had failed them, so they began looking toward the East and the occult to inspire individualistic quests for enlightenment. Naturally accompanying the rise of New Age culture, talk of "vibrations" and "mind-body connections" surged.

For a few decades, this speech style was really only found in society's woo-woo fringes: moon ceremonies, music festivals, etc. But now, thanks to a complex amalgam of modern phenomena - including social media algorithms, culture-wide movements toward "transparency" and "inclusion," further migration away from traditional religion and toward secular sites of community and ritual (think: "cult fitness" studios, start-ups that put the "cult" in "company culture," wellness influencers) - this New Age language is absolutely everywhere.

It's really no wonder these magical-sounding terms have spread so quickly: First of all, special jargon is just plain fun. Who doesn't love learning a secret code language? Having an exclusive tongue gives members of a group something to assemble around, and like a snappy new uniform, it makes them feel like they're a part of something greater and that they're doing something right with their lives.

That said, this hazy metaphysical-meets-scientific-sounding speech does come with risks. We often take for granted the material power of language, largely because it's invisible and seemingly harmless - sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you, right? Well, not quite. Having spent the past two years researching the social science of cult influence, I've learned that more than physical violence or some vague concept of "brainwashing," language is the key means by which all degrees of cult-like influence occur. With emotionally charged buzzwords and euphemisms, renamings, chants, mantras, and even hashtags, pernicious gurus are able to instill ideology, establish an "us" and a "them," justify questionable behaviour, inspire fear, gaslight followers into questioning their own reality... essentially everything a cult needs to do in order to gain and maintain power.

At its most innocent, New Age lingo acts as a symbol of in-group solidarity. When my hairdresser told me my vibration had upgraded, there was nothing sinister lurking underneath. I know that she's into naturopathic medicine and life coaches, and for her, the New Age vocabulary is a way to feel connected to a community of like-minded seekers that seems to genuinely inspire fulfillment. Those ideas may not be my particular cup of kombucha, but I've learned not to judge folks too harshly for holding faith-based beliefs (we humans are an irrational bunch by nature, after all), as long as they're not hurting anyone or pushing them to convert.

But New Age-speak can also be a red flag. In some contexts, nebulous terms like "alignment" and "awakening" serve as scammy marketing buzzwords that have no clear or specific meaning, but simply paint a portrait of the speaker as transcendently wise, like some kind of all-knowing wiseman or prophet (even if they themselves don't quite know what they're saying). In competitive workplace environments, for example, excessive New Age lingo - constant talk of "missional synergy" and "holistic idea-sharing" - can promote a culture of conformity, discouraging individualism and questioning, while obscuring the fact that behind all the gobbledygook, the company's higher-ups might not have the most "holistic" intentions (a recent Bond University study found that one in five CEOs is a clinical psychopath). And on social media, where influencers are no longer selling just athleisure and eye cream, but also their very souls, dime-a-dozen Insta-gurus like @activationvibration offer free nuggets of spiritual-ese, hoping followers will get suckered into paying for their self-actualization courses or retreats in order to learn what the hell they're actually talking about.

"Some words are used not for their meaning, but for what the word says about the person who uses it," wrote Lutheranism scholar Kendall Davis (@hispterlutheran) on his blog. Commenting on how millennial megachurches in particular exploit this New Age rhetoric as an unctuous marketing tactic, Davis writes: "The hipster church down the street isn't calling itself an 'intentional and authentic community of missional Christ followers' because each of those words carry a specific meaning, but because each of those words/phrases identify this group of Christians as not like those other Christians, those Christians who are presumably part of an 'accidental and inauthentic hermitage of anti-missional Christ deserters.'" The words' precise definitions are not important - in fact, they don't even exist. Instead, says David, it's the social capital they carry. It's their ability to instill a sense of unearned, us-versus-them elitism in followers who know how to use the language, while ostracizing or villainizing those who don't.

At its very worst, New Age language conflates science and metaphysics in a way that misrepresents and delegitimizes data, ushering in a wave of hazardous anti-science thinking. Since the New Age boom in the '60s and '70s, so many notorious figures - from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard to NXIVM's Keith Rainere - have co-opted technical terms from scientific fields like psychology and astrophysics, infusing them with vague spiritual meanings as a way to convince their followers that they're tapped into knowledge that transcends science.

Because New Age ideas and conspiracy theories have overlapped in such inauspicious ways over the past decade - giving us a whole new category of cultish belief termed "conspirituality" (think: anti-vaxx yogis, Pastel QAnoners, etc.) - this imprecise, mystical verbiage can serve as an on-ramp leading to much more destructive conspiratorial thinking. Many of QAnon's central buzzwords fall into this very same category of New Age vernacular: "paradigm shift," "5D consciousness," "awakening." This is no accident: The familiar, innocent-sounding words work to reel in and bond recruits without revealing too much. Akin to a horoscope, the generic rhetoric allows participants to project whatever they want to believe onto the language, all the while camouflaging the fact that much more ominous, fact-phobic, anti-Semitic ideas might await them deeper down the rabbit hole.

Of course, New Age-speak is not inherently treacherous. But its sheer ubiquity says something profound about this uniquely cultish time in history. Keeping our ears attuned to deceptive buzzwords dressed up as the language of enlightenment can help us all make sure we don't slip and fall into the wrong ideological whirlpool - whether we're at church, work, spin class, or perusing our Explore page.

Amanda Montell's Cultish: The Language of Fanatacism is available for purchase, here.

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Why Does Everyone Talk Like They're In A Cult?

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In late 2020, a time of cultural high-highs and low-lows (Trump would soon be out of office, but the COVID pandemic was wreaking havoc), my Instagram algorithm could not have been more confused.

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Last summer, Triangle Investigations, a New York-based HR consultancy, examined allegations of accent discrimination at a global non-profit organisation. An Ethiopian-accented staff member had reported that his colleagues frequently interrupted him during Zoom calls, commented on the unintelligibility of his English and excluded him from meetings. He became self-conscious during the meetings that he was able to attend, and ended up using the chat feature instead of speaking up, says Kia Roberts, Triangle's founder and principal.

When Roberts and her team looked into the matter, they found that the allegations had substance, and that employees of colour had been treated differently; they were being spoken to disrespectfully, as if they weren't competent to hold their positions, and their opinions and suggestions weren't being taken seriously. The investigation ultimately led the non-profit to introduce employee training and periodic HR check-ins to try and remedy the issue.

Of course, this case of linguistic discrimination wasn't an isolated episode. Globally, more people are using English than ever, and it's a dominant language in business, science and government. English is constantly evolving, because of the diverse ways different nations and groups use it. Yet instead of embracing this linguistic diversity, we still rank particular types of English higher than others - which means that both native and non-native speakers who differ from what's considered 'standard' can find themselves judged, marginalised and even penalised for the way their English sounds.

Not every type of linguistic discrimination is intentional; many people who think they're being inclusive don't understand that their inherent biases are pushing them to make judgements they don't even know they're making. Yet no matter what's driving these kinds of incidents, workers feel lasting, often demoralising, effects. And, as these kinds of situations continue - especially when companies don't recognise or stop them - things can get worse for workers, as they're side-lined or flat-out excluded in the workplace.

As the globe becomes even more connected in a remote-work world, the ability for workers to be able to speak to each other effectively and respectfully is imperative. So, how do we end linguistic discrimination - and create a more inclusive, functional use of language to benefit native and non-native speakers alike?

Speakers from some multilingual countries are thought to use less 'legitimate' forms of English than others (Credit: Getty Images)

Covert or overt
Globally, non-native speakers of English outnumber native speakers three to one, although defining the term 'native English speaker' is complicated. The term usually refers to anyone who speaks English from early childhood, as their first language. But many children grow up learning multiple languages simultaneously - for instance, if their parents are from different places, or if a nation has several official languages.

A particular status is attached to English that sounds as if it comes from countries that are wealthy, majority white and mostly monolingual. According to this limited view, multilingual countries like Nigeria and Singapore have less 'legitimate' and desirable forms of English (even though English is an official language in both). Globally, the most respected types of English are varieties such as British, American and Australian, says Sender Dovchin, a sociolinguist at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.

Within any country, certain forms of English bring fewer benefits. To give just one example from the US, African-American English remains misunderstood and discriminated against. And on an international level, certain types of speakers face judgements based on perceptions of their nationality or race, rather than their actual communication skills. "When English is spoken by some Europeans, including for example French-, German-, Italian-accented English, they can be considered really cute, sophisticated, stylish and so forth," explains Dovchin. But, she adds, English spoken by Asians, Africans or Middle Easterners may be viewed as challenging and unpleasant.

This linguistic stereotyping applies even when those Asians, Africans or Middle Easterners are in fact native speakers of English. Just seeing an Asian face makes some Americans consider that speaker's English to be hard to understand, regardless of how they actually speak or where they were born. I was born in the US, hold a UK passport and have an English degree, but like many other people of Asian descent, I've had the surreal experience of people complimenting my English fluency.

These perceptions feed into linguistic racism, or racism based on accent, dialect and speech patterns. The overt form of linguistic racism can involve deliberate belittling or shaming, such as "ethnic-accent bullying" that occurs despite someone's actual English proficiency. Or it can be more covert, like the unwitting social exclusion of people with foreign-accented English, or a seemingly well-intended compliment toward an Asian American's English.

These examples show that it may not be obvious to the perpetrators what they're doing, because there are a number of subtle psychological mechanisms at play. Cognitively, it takes more work to understand a less familiar accent. The extra brainpower involved, as well as warmer feelings toward members of one's own group, can lead to negative attitudes toward a person speaking a different type of English. Overall, it's common to assume that non-native speakers are less truthful, less intelligent and less competent; psychology studies suggest that people attach less credibility to statements spoken in a foreign accent.

These subtle mechanisms feed into behaviours that can impact negatively on people speaking different forms of English. I've been guilty of this in practice. I've found myself gravitating to colleagues I can easily banter with (so that I don't have to explain or replace Americanisms like 'inside baseball' or British terms like 'take the piss'). I've edited away Indian English expressions in reports, like 'upgradation', without wondering why I treat 'upgrading' as the better term. And in bouts of impatience during work conversations, I've spoken over or finished the sentences of colleagues who are more hesitant.

Not every type of linguistic racism is intentional, but judgements are pervasive due to our inherent biases (Credit: Getty Images)

This type of bias can take a significant psychological toll. Dovchin's research shows that many people who are shamed or excluded because of their language develop inferiority complexes, and start to believe that they're actually less intelligent. Lots of multilingual people report being fairly confident in their English-language skills in their home countries, then losing their confidence due to the way they're treated in English-first countries.

At worst, linguistic racism can lead to deprivation in education, employment, health and housing. In the workplace, people with certain accents can be openly harassed (like a Puerto Rican call centre worker who was told by a customer, "your stupid accent makes me sick"), or excluded from specific opportunities (like a Pakistani transport worker in London whose manager kept him out of conference calls).

The discrimination might also mean that certain people don't even get through the door. For instance, Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, which directs seed funding to start-ups, has openly admitted that the programme is biased against applicants with strong foreign accents. In an interview with business publication Inc., he speculated that "it could be that anyone with half a brain would realise you're going to be more successful if you speak idiomatic English, so they must just be clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong accent". An outcry followed these comments, but Graham was unrepentant, writing "you can't make it be work to understand you". This is a classic expression of native-speaker privilege: the minority of global English speakers demanding that the majority change.
How to chip away at linguistic racism
Linguistic racism needs to be tackled head on, both at a corporate and individual level. "If we wait for it to happen organically, it will never happen," believes Dovchin.

First, organisations need to be strategic about having ongoing conversations about linguistic diversity as a type of diversity, educating staff about how language-related biases affect communications and opportunities and incorporating this into policies.

But, on an individual level, speakers of English as a first language can make their English more accessible. They can slow down, and avoid inside jokes and idioms, for instance. They can talk less in meetings to give more space to non-native speakers, while also allowing non-native speakers to chair meetings and set the tone for communications. They can also pay attention to body language and improve their listening skills - for instance, by seeking out popular culture featuring varied groups of people, and thus varied ways of communicating. With greater exposure, the brain becomes better at understanding differently accented speech. Overall, everyone can become more aware of language-related biases.

Suresh Canagarajah, a linguist at Pennsylvania State University, US, says that given how transnational work has become, we all need to get better at communicating with people speaking all kinds of English. "You can't afford to say 'I don't understand Chinglish or I don't understand Indian English', because you're going to lose out on that market." This certainly applies to hiring decisions; highly qualified candidates may be overlooked if they trigger a hiring manager's biases about less prestigious types of English. There, says Canagarajah, "You're focusing on the wrong thing, and maybe losing on a lot of expertise."

Yet even if companies and individuals do what they can to level the playing field, another option is to change our ideas about what constitutes 'good' English. In many workplace settings, it would make more sense to focus on effective communication rather than flowery prose or slangy chat. In functional settings, someone who is adept at understanding varied types of English is actually a better communicator than a person who can only understand their own form, whether it's considered native or not.

I've been reflecting a lot on the extent to which my career depends on my privilege as a so-called native English speaker. To teach English in Romania, I wasn't required to have any teaching qualifications; simply being American was enough. To be hired to write and edit publications, my primary asset has been my familiarity with the kind of English that carries global cachet.

The very least that I, and others like me, can do with this privilege is to become aware of its effects and reduce the ways that we contribute to it. Individual acts of thoughtfulness can't dismantle the structures of power that keep North American and Western European English dominant. But they can help cultivate an appreciation of English in all its diversity.

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The pervasive problem of 'linguistic racism'

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Not everyone who speaks English is treated the same way. What happens when accent discrimination creeps in to our conscious and unconscious - and what do we do about our biases?

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Where did English come from? - Claire Bowern

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"Specifically" and "probably" top the list of the most irritating mispronounced words, according to a new survey.

Linguistic experts said that people were often reticent about correcting the pronunciation of others in public out of fear of being labelled a "pedant".

But most people are more comfortable in taking family members to task when they make a verbal misstep, they added.

In a study involving 2,000 participants, 35 per cent of respondents listed "pacifically" as the most annoying verbal error.

Saying "probly" instead of "probably" riled 28 per cent and over a quarter (26 per cent) said the most annoying misused word was "expresso" instead of espresso.

Using the word "specially" instead of "especially" was a bugbear for 25 per cent and "artick" rather than "arctic" wound up 19 per cent of people.

Despite 61 per cent of 2,000 respondents to the survey from insights agency Perspectus Global finding it annoying when others say words wrongly, 65 per cent would be too embarrassed to correct them.

However, 35 per cent cannot resist correcting their friends and family, while 10 per cent are happy to tell a stranger they have mispronounced a word.

A further 25 per cent say they have had a full-blown row with a friend, colleague or family member over the correct pronunciation of a word.

Dr Alex Baratta, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Manchester University, commented: "Language is always changing, and this can apply to pronunciations of words and not just word meanings and grammar.

"In some cases, a word may change its pronunciation, or end up with two existing pronunciations, based on what might have started out as an error.

"Once the new pronunciation takes hold in a society, then it's no longer an error but an innovation.

"Differences in pronunciation can arise due to the natural speech of certain groups or informal speech in general, so that we have clippings, eg probly.

"It's ultimately down to notions of correctness but not wishing to risk being labelled pedantic for correcting some people, whereas with family we might feel more close to do so."

Which mispronunciations do you find the most irritating? Tell us in the comments section below and then read what Telegraph readers had to say

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Annoyed by mispronunciations? These 'pacific' words will 'probly' leave you fuming

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"Specifically" and "probably" top the list of the most irritating mispronounced words, according to a new survey. Linguistic experts said that people were often reticent about correcting the pronunciation of others in public out of fear of being labelled a "pedant".