Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog - Kitty Burns Florey

I never learned how to diagram sentences, going through middle school in the 1980s, by which time it had fallen out of favor. But I always wished I had learned how to diagram sentences - it sounded fun! So I read this book. And I learned that diagramming sentences was fun, for the right kind of kid, which, let's face it, I probably was. But it also had it's flaws, and tree diagramming of sentences is now the in-thing. Which actually looks much cooler - more logical.

I didn't learn how to diagram sentences, but I got a little bit of the flavor from this book. And the author is funny and well-read. She has excellent side notes in the book - well worth reading. My favorite one lead me to read an essay by Mark Twain called Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses. Boy howdy, you did not want to be a writer who Mark Twain thought was an idiot. Now I have to go read some Mark Twain (which I haven't read since middle school in the 1980s). Seriously, check out the Mark Twain essay. Even my very skeptical, non-grammar snob husband thought it was funny.


Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences
Kitty Burns Florey
2006
Available from Amazon