Children’s Book About William Carlos Williams

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Earlier in the show, we asked what books you were recommending to other people these days, and I wanted to share the one that I’m recommending to people.

It’s a book for anybody who wants to write better English. It’s by Constance Hale, and it’s called Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch. And supposedly this book is about verbs. The subtitle is Let Verbs Power Your Writing, and verbs, after all, are the heartbeat of a sentence, right? But this book is really not just about verbs. It’s a bang up course about writing.

Well, it’s really accessible. It’s really practical. It’s often funny. And what she does is she debunks a lot of the language myths that vex us. She shows you how to smash your bad writing habits. And she gives you examples of writing so good that you’ll want to smooch whoever wrote it. That’s her idea.

But, you know, Grant, what I didn’t know before reading this book is that Constance Hale grew up on the island of Oahu speaking pidgin English with her peers and speaking proper English with her East Coast educated parents at home. And what I love about the book is that she has this appreciation of English and exuberance, really, that we see so often in people who speak more than just English.

So it’s an enjoyable book for improving your writing no matter how good you are as a writer. I really recommend it. It’s called Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch by Constance Hale.

I’ve got one book to recommend. You know, in my house, we read a lot of books to my son. My wife is an avid reader. I’m an avid reader. He is turning into one. At night, we have the ritual where we read from three to six books to him, kids’ books.

And one book that really struck me recently was a biography of William Carlos Williams, written for kids. It’s not only a beautiful book, the art is outstanding. They’ve done amazing things in presenting his poems with an interesting collage and layers of color. Gorgeous.

But it tells the story about this man in a way that doesn’t aggrandize him, but it plainly states, here is a man who got good at something and made the most of it. And I loved that simple message. The book is called A River of Words.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, and it’s a biography of William Carlos Williams.

Nice. Lots of examples of poetry?

Yes, lots of examples of his poetry in the book. I should say that one of the reasons this book struck me is that my son has this problem that a lot of beginning writers have, and even older writers. You have a vision in your head of an idea, and you can’t put it down in words.

It’s somehow cheapened or lessened as it’s transmitted through your body to your hands, right?

Oh, yeah, the great frustration. And my son immediately picked up on this notion that that was something that this famous poet and pediatrician, this famous poet had gone through. And he had palpable relief. He was noticeably relieved to find that somebody else had had the same problem that he had.

So the book is called A River of Words, and it’s a biography of William Carlos Williams.

We’d love to hear your recommendations, the books that you’re pressing into people’s hands these days. You can email us at words@waywordradio.org.