A is For Anonymuncle: The Brabbler's Endangered ABC

by Safia Shah

Imagine a world where A was not for apple and B was not for ball. An eccentric, topsy-turvey, wordy sort of a world in which, anonymuncle replaced apple in our ABCs and blutterbung replaced ball. Imagine what would happen if we rescued our endangered, underused words. How much more rewarding would it be to call a big-head a cockalorum, or rainwater dog’s soup? What would Mum or the dinner lady say to a child who called her food zamzodden?

The Brabbler’s ABC introduces children to some of the lost friends of the English language – forgotten and fading words that are hoping to be adopted by them. Great sounding, word mouthfuls, such as gubbertushed and yaffle, quaggy and snirtle.

It is up to readers to decide whether to befriend any of these elderly and enfeebled words, but The Brabbler can’t help thinking that as we already know that A is for apple and B is for ball, children (and adults) might have a moment to imagine a world in which yaffle and wheeple could finally make themselves heard.

Fast-moving, humourous and lavishly illustrated, this book is part of a series prepared to help bring underused words back into usage in homes, in classrooms and in playgrounds. As a spin-off from the wacky world of Carnaby Street and her Great Uninvited, the Brabbler’s Guides encourage children from as young as seven to experiment with the sounds of great words and to express themselves in a manner far removed from the confines of text and tweet.
About the Author
Safia Shah is a hodgepodge of Anglo/Afghan/Indian/Scottish ancestry. She zigzags between Morocco, where she has ducks, cockroaches and tiny tortoises and the UK, where she lives on an old grain barge.

34 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 31, 2013

About the author

Safia Shah is a British writer, editor and television news producer, following in the footsteps of her distinguished Anglo-Afghan Indian family. She is the daughter of the well-known author and teacher in the Sufi mystical tradition, Idries Shah; the twin sister of writer, journalist and documentary maker, Tahir Shah, and the younger sister of the writer, reporter and documentary filmmaker, Saira Shah.

Educated at Bryanston School in Dorset, England, Shah went on to study at the Sorbonne and University of Grenoble in France. She has worked for the London-based Institute for Cultural Research as a research assistant and editor and worked with Afghan refugees in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, as well as reporting on social issues there. She is also a freelance writer and has edited for the Institute of Health Sciences.

Safia Shah's most notable work is Afghan Caravan, a miscellany which was collected by Idries Shah and edited by her. Afghan Caravan was chosen by Nobel prize-winning writer Doris Lessing as the Daily Telegraph "Book of the Year" where it was described as "a cornucopia a mix of magical tales, nuggets from history... an Aladdin's cave of a book" and in Literary Review as "a great deal of fascinating material... It is a book to be dipped into, excellent bedside reading."

‘Brown Bag’ is a short story included in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology 4, and has been regarded as "A short and sharp and very English story from Casablanca-based Safia Shah, that captures something of the zeitgeist of our modern, Internet-focused age. The storytelling is adequate throughout, but the real triumph comes right at the end, where it’s sudden and completely unexpected." It describes the main character's reflections on her mother’s passing, as well as on incidental memories from the past. The 20 stories collected in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology 4 were selected from more than 2,000 entries for the 2011 Bristol Short Story Prize.

Shah is about to release "Carnaby Street’s Great Uninvited: Around the World in 80 Years".

Around The World in 80 Years is the first in a series of Carnaby books and study notes, which are designed to help kids take a break from texting and tweets and have fun with the spoken word. The campaign to Bring Words Back To Life is backed by a website aimed at children, parents and teachers (www.carnabysuninvited.com). Through reading the book and accessing the website children, their parents and teachers can join in the fun, trade favourite words and might possibly even learn to knit with pencils. Fear not, the link between knitting and words becomes apparent inside the pages of Carnaby’s wacky world.

Reviews

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the idea of introducing children to words that have gone out of use. I felt like the sentences used to reintroduce them weren't very good. they were supposed to be funny,but usually came off as weird.