What do rappers and computer programmers have in common? A passion for creating kids books. After a few years of hard work, Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter have just published what they describe to be “the worst alphabet for kids ever,” and it’s so ridiculously hilarious, even adults would have an interesting time reading it.
“We were hanging out with our mutual friends and their kid, playing with these alphabet flashcards, him learning the letters,” Chris told Bored Panda. “We both got a laugh out of the card for “Q” which read: “Q is for Quinoa.” That was so entertaining to us because, well, what little kid knows or cares about quinoa? And also, isn’t that a terrible “Q” word, considering that it isn’t even phonetic? That was the moment that sparked the initial idea to create our own funny book for learning letters with only words like quinoa. The natural next step was to discover that the English language is so mean and nasty, there’s no shortage of unexpected words to choose from, and so the children book format quickly evolved into these little blurbs, like “Q is for Quinoa: We enjoy quinoa and quiche by the quays of Qatar.” As you can imagine, we had a fantastic time writing it.”
“For a few months, we had a shared Google document where we’d pop in and add words as we discovered them,” Raj added. “After a while, it became pretty clear that the words we had collected implied a fantastic universe full of gnomes, czars, and tsunamis. For some letters, like “P” and “K,” there are quite a few silent first letter words to choose from — so we picked the words that felt the most engaging for young readers, like “pterodactyl” and “knight.” Other letters were much trickier, with few if any appropriate words to choose from. For those, we had to put some significant time and effort into creating clever workarounds that still matched the overall spirit of the funny book for kids.”
“Neither of us are children’s book authors by trade — Chris is a computer programmer, and I’m a rapper otherwise known as Lushlife,” he said. “When we started down the road to bring this book to life, I don’t think we realized just how long the process would take. From start to finish, the project took almost three years to complete. Even though the book consists of just a couple hundred words, we went through scores of revisions. On top of that, we hardly knew anyone in the publishing world, so it took over a year just to find the right folks to help us get a publisher on board. Once we were able to cross that hurdle, our amazing illustrator, Maria Beddia spent a year in her studio working on the funny drawings. I can’t think of anyone else who could’ve so beautifully interpreted our crazy requests, like having ‘a french leopard and a tiny witch sitting in a creepy Victorian home playing the Ouija board.'”
Chris also said that he firmly believes that kids are about as smart as adults, but without the wisdom or communication skills to fully demonstrate it. “We tend to underestimate our children when we present an overly simplified version of the world in teaching certain subjects. It can be enormously frustrating, for example, to have a particular set of spelling rules drilled into one’s head, only to discover later that “I before E” is a giant conspiracy. Of course, the basics are important too, but why not hint at a more complete picture from a relatively early stage, and trust that our kids can handle it? Our hope is that P is for Pterodactyl fills the latter role. Also, kids should reach for our book because of the purple turban-wearing pteranodon with a skin condition.”
More info: Amazon
P.S. Even though the first run sold out almost immediately upon release this week, the guys have another printing being rush processed — so folks that want to order now on Amazon will receive their copy of P is for Pterodactyl in just a couple weeks.
People think P is for Pterodactyl would make a great addition to any bookshelf
To be Honest, my Wrist hurts, my Knee aches, my Eyes are blurry. Maybe I should just see a Psychologist.
Same for me, but it was because I was playing the Xylophone. I'm getting Pneumonia even Writing this Euphonious comment. Maybe I'll leave it to my Eight Heirs who can play Ukelele. If they don't want to I'll have to Wrangle them for it. By the way, there's a Gnat in my room that hates Jalapenos. (Sorry... This is a bit of a stretch. I'll Cease now.)
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Vast: The Crystal Caverns is a great (albeit complicated) board game which also has a female knight. The game doesn't make a big deal of it, she's just in all the artwork, being her awesome self.https://dtgreviews.c...017/03/vast.jpg
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The English language! We don’t need to explain the rules, because we made it all up!
As a kid (55+ years ago) I read the entire 2 volume Mirriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and I still remember a line from the introduction: "Throughout its history English has had all the delicate sensitivity of a powerful vacuum cleaner."
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Crazy ABCs, off their children's album. For Q they had qat, an evergreen shrub.
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The authors and illustrator of this book need to meet Richard Lederer. He has written numerous books about the inanities of the English language.
Even at 80 years of age Richard still publishes stuff regularly on his blog, "Verbivore" http://verbivore.com/wordpress/
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It's so hard for non English speakers to learn words like "contest" because depending on what you're saying the pronunciation changes. Then there's the there, their, they're and other words that are the same word but spells differently and the meaning changes. Ahh English I guess I'm thankful I speak you already lol
Oh yeah, that's crazy when you think about it. "CON-test" is the noun meaning "a competitive event" and "con-TEST" is a verb, "to contest something", meaning "to oppose" or "to compete for". I mean, it's tough, but it's interesting.
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Very celever, I like it! Curious tho, how do you people pronounce Tsunami and Quinoa? Both are phonetic, at least in their respective origin languages.
In America, we pronounce tsunami like "soo-nah-mee" and quinoa like "keen-wah"
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I think I am going to have Carpal-tunnel syndrome after typing the receding passage: Morgue sales are up four percent, and four is not pronounced the same way as sour or hour. Broth is not the broth in brother, moth in mother. Epitome does not rhyme with home, but dummy. Honestly, it's a stomach ache to keep thinking up these unconditioned shindigs of vocabulary. See you on Wednesday! (Not wed-nez-day, but wenz-day)
Just which of these words do you imagine people will have a hard time reading? Literate much?
And know I'm trying to figure out how to pronounce Quinoa in english... In french we say "key-noah"...
My daughter had to bring in something that started with P to her preschool. She loved dinosaurs, so she brought in a stuffed Pteranodon, which she knew started with a P. When she put it out for show and tell, her teacher said, no Pteranodon starts with a T. This teacher also thought Amsterdam was in Denmark. We switched preschools after that.
"... English has pursued other languages down back alleys to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for spare vocabulary" - JamesD. Nicoll (my favorite explanation of English.
Not sure when this was published but it's a rip off of a Barenaked Ladies song on the Snack Time album (2007) - which is a thing they did for kids...and it's ace. The song is called, 'Crazy ABCs'.
"People at the marketing department think P is for Pterodactyl would make a great addition to any bookshelf" ftfy
What do you all think of this alphabet? https://www.boredpanda.com/aargh-26-tinies-terrible-tales-female-version/
This is like how GHOTI is another way to spell FISH. gh, pronounced /f/ as in enough or tough o, pronounced /ɪ/ as in women ti, pronounced as in nation or motion. The key to the phenomenon is that the pronunciations of the constructed word's three parts are inconsistent with how they would be pronounced in those placements. To illustrate: gh can only resemble f when following the letters ou / au at the end of certain morphemes ("cough", "laugh"), while ti can only resemble sh when followed by the letters -on / -al / -an ("station", "spatial", "martian"), etc. The expected pronunciation in English would sound like "goaty".
Fun fact: The "K" in knight, knife, etc was originally said in Modern English (such as in Elizabethan times). For some reason the pronunciation was dropped but not the spelling.
This reminds me owhen I was 10. My parents emigrated here from Western Europe when I was a zygote (Anchor Baby!). My father had a German friend over who was trying to tease me about English. He kept saying k-nife, until I shut him down. How do you say horse in German? Is it p-ferd or pferd? A 10 year old took down a 40 yyear old in his native tongue. Fick dich ab, Arschloch!
I don't know who Piborg talked to--everyone I know who speaks ESL (English as a Second Language) says English is one of the hardest languages to learn, and this book shows why. That, and that clip from "I Love Lucy" where Ricky is reading a children's book and mispronounces "bough" "tough" and "through" for obvious reasons.
That is so not true (a linguist here). English is probably one of the easiest popular languages to learn in terms of grammar and syntax. Pronunciation is the tricky part, I'll give you that. In my experience, people who study English as a foreign language are quite good at spelling compared to natives. All those problems that natives have with "their, "they're", "there", etc. are not really a problem for learners of English as a second language, probably because natives largely learn by hearing the language first (you would have learned how to say "their", "they're" etc. before you learnt how to spell it) whereas learners study grammar, syntax and spelling before they get used to pronunciation. Also, many non-English speaking countries put a lot of emphasis on teaching their own language well at schools from a young age, which as far as I know doesn't happen with English in English speaking countries.
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I before E, except after C was b******t, as were the 3 R's (Writing, and Arithmetic? Who decided that was acceptable?), is Y a vowel now, or not?, does Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious count as a word?, why does "subtle" have a silent B?. The list goes on...
"pinche anglosajones mamadores, dejen de pensar que son lo máximo pendejos" essentially translates to "scullion Anglo-Saxon suckers, thinking they are the ultimate a******s" (scullion = pleb, A-S = old english) 😂
"bloody anglo-saxon f*****s, stop thinking you are the best, you a******s"
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Or maybe they just listened to Barenaked Ladies' album, "Snacktime!," which came out in 2008. 'Crazy ABC's' already did this with many of the same words.
Nothing wrong with it, this book will definitely expand a child's vocabulary
Silent letters need to go as well as everything should be spelled phonetically technically speaking the word phonetically is it even spelled phonetically what just pisses me off LOL and i before e except after C rule is more often words have ei i effing despise spelling as a dyslexic person
I am with you. Don't know why you got down voted.
Load More Replies... To be Honest, my Wrist hurts, my Knee aches, my Eyes are blurry. Maybe I should just see a Psychologist.
Same for me, but it was because I was playing the Xylophone. I'm getting Pneumonia even Writing this Euphonious comment. Maybe I'll leave it to my Eight Heirs who can play Ukelele. If they don't want to I'll have to Wrangle them for it. By the way, there's a Gnat in my room that hates Jalapenos. (Sorry... This is a bit of a stretch. I'll Cease now.)
Load More Replies... Vast: The Crystal Caverns is a great (albeit complicated) board game which also has a female knight. The game doesn't make a big deal of it, she's just in all the artwork, being her awesome self.https://dtgreviews.c...017/03/vast.jpg
Load More Replies... The English language! We don’t need to explain the rules, because we made it all up!
As a kid (55+ years ago) I read the entire 2 volume Mirriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and I still remember a line from the introduction: "Throughout its history English has had all the delicate sensitivity of a powerful vacuum cleaner."
Load More Replies... Crazy ABCs, off their children's album. For Q they had qat, an evergreen shrub.
Load More Replies... The authors and illustrator of this book need to meet Richard Lederer. He has written numerous books about the inanities of the English language.
Even at 80 years of age Richard still publishes stuff regularly on his blog, "Verbivore" http://verbivore.com/wordpress/
Load More Replies... It's so hard for non English speakers to learn words like "contest" because depending on what you're saying the pronunciation changes. Then there's the there, their, they're and other words that are the same word but spells differently and the meaning changes. Ahh English I guess I'm thankful I speak you already lol
Oh yeah, that's crazy when you think about it. "CON-test" is the noun meaning "a competitive event" and "con-TEST" is a verb, "to contest something", meaning "to oppose" or "to compete for". I mean, it's tough, but it's interesting.
Load More Replies... Very celever, I like it! Curious tho, how do you people pronounce Tsunami and Quinoa? Both are phonetic, at least in their respective origin languages.
In America, we pronounce tsunami like "soo-nah-mee" and quinoa like "keen-wah"
Load More Replies... I think I am going to have Carpal-tunnel syndrome after typing the receding passage: Morgue sales are up four percent, and four is not pronounced the same way as sour or hour. Broth is not the broth in brother, moth in mother. Epitome does not rhyme with home, but dummy. Honestly, it's a stomach ache to keep thinking up these unconditioned shindigs of vocabulary. See you on Wednesday! (Not wed-nez-day, but wenz-day)
Just which of these words do you imagine people will have a hard time reading? Literate much?
And know I'm trying to figure out how to pronounce Quinoa in english... In french we say "key-noah"...
My daughter had to bring in something that started with P to her preschool. She loved dinosaurs, so she brought in a stuffed Pteranodon, which she knew started with a P. When she put it out for show and tell, her teacher said, no Pteranodon starts with a T. This teacher also thought Amsterdam was in Denmark. We switched preschools after that.
"... English has pursued other languages down back alleys to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for spare vocabulary" - JamesD. Nicoll (my favorite explanation of English.
Not sure when this was published but it's a rip off of a Barenaked Ladies song on the Snack Time album (2007) - which is a thing they did for kids...and it's ace. The song is called, 'Crazy ABCs'.
"People at the marketing department think P is for Pterodactyl would make a great addition to any bookshelf" ftfy
What do you all think of this alphabet? https://www.boredpanda.com/aargh-26-tinies-terrible-tales-female-version/
This is like how GHOTI is another way to spell FISH. gh, pronounced /f/ as in enough or tough o, pronounced /ɪ/ as in women ti, pronounced as in nation or motion. The key to the phenomenon is that the pronunciations of the constructed word's three parts are inconsistent with how they would be pronounced in those placements. To illustrate: gh can only resemble f when following the letters ou / au at the end of certain morphemes ("cough", "laugh"), while ti can only resemble sh when followed by the letters -on / -al / -an ("station", "spatial", "martian"), etc. The expected pronunciation in English would sound like "goaty".
Fun fact: The "K" in knight, knife, etc was originally said in Modern English (such as in Elizabethan times). For some reason the pronunciation was dropped but not the spelling.
This reminds me owhen I was 10. My parents emigrated here from Western Europe when I was a zygote (Anchor Baby!). My father had a German friend over who was trying to tease me about English. He kept saying k-nife, until I shut him down. How do you say horse in German? Is it p-ferd or pferd? A 10 year old took down a 40 yyear old in his native tongue. Fick dich ab, Arschloch!
I don't know who Piborg talked to--everyone I know who speaks ESL (English as a Second Language) says English is one of the hardest languages to learn, and this book shows why. That, and that clip from "I Love Lucy" where Ricky is reading a children's book and mispronounces "bough" "tough" and "through" for obvious reasons.
That is so not true (a linguist here). English is probably one of the easiest popular languages to learn in terms of grammar and syntax. Pronunciation is the tricky part, I'll give you that. In my experience, people who study English as a foreign language are quite good at spelling compared to natives. All those problems that natives have with "their, "they're", "there", etc. are not really a problem for learners of English as a second language, probably because natives largely learn by hearing the language first (you would have learned how to say "their", "they're" etc. before you learnt how to spell it) whereas learners study grammar, syntax and spelling before they get used to pronunciation. Also, many non-English speaking countries put a lot of emphasis on teaching their own language well at schools from a young age, which as far as I know doesn't happen with English in English speaking countries.
Load More Replies... I before E, except after C was b******t, as were the 3 R's (Writing, and Arithmetic? Who decided that was acceptable?), is Y a vowel now, or not?, does Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious count as a word?, why does "subtle" have a silent B?. The list goes on...
"pinche anglosajones mamadores, dejen de pensar que son lo máximo pendejos" essentially translates to "scullion Anglo-Saxon suckers, thinking they are the ultimate a******s" (scullion = pleb, A-S = old english) 😂
"bloody anglo-saxon f*****s, stop thinking you are the best, you a******s"
Load More Replies... Or maybe they just listened to Barenaked Ladies' album, "Snacktime!," which came out in 2008. 'Crazy ABC's' already did this with many of the same words.
Nothing wrong with it, this book will definitely expand a child's vocabulary
Silent letters need to go as well as everything should be spelled phonetically technically speaking the word phonetically is it even spelled phonetically what just pisses me off LOL and i before e except after C rule is more often words have ei i effing despise spelling as a dyslexic person
I am with you. Don't know why you got down voted.
Load More Replies...
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