Hello! I'm a new member. A friend sent me a gift subscription. I don't yet know what his login name is, though. He'll probably come on later.

Anyway, I love this subject, heteronyms. Here's the title of a Dr. Seuss book:

**The Tough Coughed as he Ploughed the Dough.**

There's a picture on the cover of this tough guy, with a plough, pushing it through heaps of what appears to be a field of bread dough. I can't remember whether he is holding a handkerchief in front of his mouth, but we can pretty much assume.....:-D

Marian

"Prevention is the better part of valor." --Shakespeare/Drake

:You never can tell with "-ough". I used to know a doctor named Plough. He pronounced it "Plew".
i knew a lady named "Clough". She pronounced it "Cluff".

Welcome aBoard Marian63.

I have moved the Helpful Hints and FAQs thread in Info and Announcements back up to the top.

I wonder how many of us can count exposure to Dr. Seuss as one of the seminal influences on our love of language. We had a thread on early reading influences some time ago, but after the long hard trip of getting the HH&F thread back to the top I am somewhat disinclined to spend the time looking for it. Dr. Bill?

In the early reading influence thread we discussed the authors that influenced our language habits; I wonder if any of us had the nerve to include Dr. Seuss or if we thought him a trifle too lowbrow.

I can't really say Seuss was a big influence on me, except that I think poetry should rhyme. :-) I was strongly influenced by Maurice Sendak ("Where the Wild Things Are") however.

Hi Marian! Good to see you here! I own a copy of the first book Dr. Seuss illustrated, before he began writing his own books. Come on over - I'll show it to you! It's called Boners, and is a collection of students' malaprops, many of which are now urban legend. Unfortunately, it was Dick and Jane who got me reading, with considerable help from Spot, of course!

Oh, oh, oh, see Spot spot Dick. See Spot bite Dick. See Dick run. C'mon, guys, you remember this stuff, don't you?

Dear Geoff:

Spot, Dick, Jane and was it Fluffy taught me to read also. As soon as I understood the decoding system, it was off in a flash to Nancy Drew, whom I devoured. This was way back in 1957, Sputnik's year, I think, and I read the old Nancy Drew with words like frock and roadsters. When the text was changed to more contemporary words--after I'd stopped reading Nancy and moved on to Agatha Christie--I think a lot was lost from the flavor of those old mysteries.

Best regards from an old stick-in-the-mud,
WW

PS: Seuss was not an influence, but he's great fun to read to kids today. Red fish, blue fish, old fish, new fish...

off in a flash to Nancy Drew

Well, WW, in keeping with today's AWAD word, Nancy Drew you in and got you hooked! Now, how about the local girl (for my part of the country, Portland, Oregon) Ramona Quimby?

Stick in the mud? Hey, it's rained here for nigh onta forty daze an' forty nights; I'm a stick in the flood!

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone (except Geoff, who I can forgive because I am a stick in the flood of forty daze, too -- his welcome had to be a bit damp, by necessity).

The trophy above is for my parents, who got me interested in reading. Mama read us A.A. Milne and wonderful European fairy tales. I also remember something called **Beyond the River to Danger** about early European settlers in America (very dated now, I am sure), Bambi, and one I loved about children in South America who made lace. I loved listening to the children's program on the radio called "Let's Pretend," too. At one time, recordings of these programs could be purchased from Publisher's Central Bureau. I wish I had bought some.

But the real trophy goes to Daddy, who read us Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and A Christmas Carol. And I couldn't get enough of Kipling's "Rikki Tikki Tavi." When my first grade teacher asked the kids to bring their favorite stories to school for her to read aloud, I brought Rikki Tikki. I wondered why she never read it. She read the dumbest stories, I thought. But in adulthood, Mother told me that the teacher had called her in a state of shock and explained that there was no way that she could read that story!! The other kids would not understand it, she said.

Daddy said he read those things to us because his father read them to him. My brother was three years younger than I was, and he loved them, too. I have to admit, I didn't like **Kidnapped** as I didn't understand it, but I loved "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest: yo ho ho and a bottle of rum," and Long John Silver in Treasure Island. (My dad's name was John, too.!)

By the way, it was Puff, not Fluffy. And I had to go through the Dick and Jane books twice -- once in a private kindergarten, then again in first grade, ho hum.

The wonderful thing about my school was, though, that when we finished our work, we had free time to read, and read, and read, and read, and read.

Marian



"Prevention is the better part of valor." --Shakespeare/Drake

Thanks, Marian, for the correction on Puff! It's extremely important to correctly cite primary sources!

Best regards,
DubDub, who's often pfffttt'd here (and that ain't Puffed)

PS: To Geoff...Ramona is my kind of gal!

I loved Nancy! I liked her better than Hardy Boys. I guess I liked girls even before puberty. :-)

early reading influence thread

Yes, Faldage! I've been wanting to bring that thread back up with the revised list I promised maverick, and to let the new folks have a crack a it. I consider it an AWAD Classic (for as long as I've been here, anyway). But mav hasn't been around to moderate (fair to say we needed his "alphatist's" guidance on this one), so I'll wait till he returns. However, in the meantime, here's the page to "Fire your own canon, but..." There's also plenty discussion of The Lord of the Rings there, as I recall, so it's a pretty timely read just for that:

http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=32084

And welcome, Marian63! I'm sure you'll enjoy the ride!