Book Review
Regards to the Readers 🙏 💐
“Let’s explore the History of writing through this book review!”
A book review is a learning activity that develops critical thinking by encouraging readers to analyze, interpret, and judge a book’s ideas and presentation
* It enhances the reading abilities of the students and teachers.
The main objective of this post is to
inculcate the habit of reading among the children.
I prefer to study many story books,Fictions,non-fictions,poems,Biographies ,autobiographies etc. and usually write book reviews.
*Book Review develops the vocabulary, speed of reading etc
I would like to present the “Analysis “of the book which I read,,
Title of the book is
”The story of writing”.
I) PRELIMINARY INFORMATION
• Title of the book : “ The Story of Writing”
• Author: “Nita Berry”
• Source: “ Children’s Book Trust,New Delhi (CBT Publication -1998)
• Category of the book: Non-Fiction
• No.of pages in the book: 136
• Physical features: 1)Pictorial 2)colourful
• Cost of the book: Rs.75
II) ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK:
BEGINNINGS:
• About 25000 years ago Man and Beast alike killed for survival.Man was a hunter and lived in rocky caves.
• At that time, man snarls and grunts and gradually began to express his thoughts through sounds.
• Cave man had tried to say something through pictures on the walls of his caves.So,the art writing grew out of these pictures.So writing is also one of the CREATIVE INVENTIONS of the human.
• Later,“writing”is a document form language used for cultural progress and administrative purposes.
A GIFT OF GOD
• Ancient civilizations considered “writing”is a symbol of language and to be a God-given gift.So it is sacred.
• In India,Brahma ,the creator of the universe was considered to be the creator of the script.Thatswhy ancient Indian script was calledvas Brahmi.
• Sumerians called Nebo and Egyptians called “ Thoth” etc are scribe of the Gods.
• Arabic tradition believed that Allah created letters with his divine pen.
• Chinese Mythology tells us that writing was gifted to man by the four-eyed,Dragon faced wizard, Cangjie.
SLANT &STYLE
• All the people did not write the same way.
• In English ,Sanskrit,Hindi and in most of our languages ,we write from left to right.
• Greek script writing is”BOUSTROPHEDON”(to turn like oxen in ploughing) • Chinese,Japanese write top to bottom (Right to left&Left to right)
• Mexicans write from bottom to top.
• Hebrew ,Turkish ,Arabic and Persian etc are write from right to left. A GROWING TREE
• In the ancient time people used papyrus ,wax,stone and wood etc as writing tools.
*quills ,stylised and chisels etc were used as brushes.
* Semitic script is believed to be the parent script of many world languages.
* Roman Script was widely used in Europe,America,Asia,Australia and Africa in ancient time.Today about 400main scripts used all over the world.
A WAY TO REMEMBER
• Ancient Man was a hunter and Practical being.He felt that he needed certain things to remember like number of animals he had stored away.
• Number of days between one full moon and the next .
• He used Tree trunks or poles were chipped with marks everyday to make a sort of rough calendar.
• For shepherds to keep count of sheep with help of pebbles in a sack.
• South American people used “quippu” to remember things (knotted ropes)
• Picture writing is the second stage of writing. Symbolic writing
• Early man used rocky walls of his caves to draw geometric patterns of animals,birds and hunting scenes.
• Slowly changed to write on rock surfaces,animal skins and tree barks.Many cave drawings have been found as far away as in Spain and Sahara desert.
• Ancient man is very inventive and made use of the natural substances.
• Man became more civilized and his simple drawings began to take on more meaning.
IDEOGRAMS :
Some pictures that have no words but generate certain ideas in man's mind.
Eg: Two feet_walking
Picture writing has some difficulty .It is impossible to create and remember signs for thousands of words and names,So man started to use words instead of pictures.So spoken language and written symbols began to be related.This was the beginning of “Phonetics”.
“Distinct civilizations like the Sumerian and the Babylonian ,the Egyptian ,the Hittite ,the Chinese and the North and South American created scripts for their own ways of writing.
* Man became more sophisticated ,he improved his writing form by introducing spaces between words,creating punctuation marks and paragraphing.
* Artistic form of writing (Calligraphy)was developed.
*Clever invention of Printing press led to stop growing much of the art of writing.
ON THE SAND OF EGYPT
*The Egyptian Civilization was one of the earliest civilizations on the earth.
* writings engraved on the Pyramids,stonetombs,the mysterious Sphinx etc.This system of writing was called HIEROGLYPHS.They carved about kings,pharaoh’s etc.
* Alphabetic writing was the final stage in the history of Egyptian writing.
* Code deciphered.Rosetta stone in 1821 Champollion prepared an Egyptian grammar.
IN THE LAND OF TWO RIVERs
*In between the Tigris and Euphrates plenty bof clay tablets were found with writings They evidenced the terrible floods of Mesopotamia.
*Egyptian Early man wrote on stine and tree barks.
*Busy cities,fertile valleys abd beautiful gardens of Mesopotamia were written in ancient time.
“CUNEIFORM”
*Cuneiform writing is a series of wedge-shaped characters with lines and dots. * Reading and writing cuneiform was a difficult task because it had almost six hundred signs,numbers,names,common objects.
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY
• 4000yrsvago,Mesopotamia school hours stretched from dawn tondusk with short lunch break.Pupils sat on brick bench and write on clay tablets .
• Farmers offer the first fruits to God and believed ,God would save from disasters.
• Mesopotamians maintained a written record to buy a slave /gold/ silver.
• It was written on a soft clay tablets
• Metal or semi precious stone made seal also used by them.
THE SEMITIC FAMILY
*In Asia about 1000BC the Hebrews and Phoenicians who lived on the shores of mediterranean sea had reduced their writing needs to 22 letters .These are the first true phonetic alphabets.
*Aramaic Language became an international language and script ,it mothered many languages in the middle East and Asia.
ON TO SUNNY GREECE
• Greeks followed the same order of phoenicians but renamed their letters.
• To represent Vowel sounds -a(alpha),e(epsilan),I(iota),O (Omicron)and U(upsilon)
• Greek writings were carved on stone,Painted on pottery,wax tablets and leather etc.
Greeks were great seafarers.They valued the arts,eloquent speech and the quest for knowledge beauty and wisdom.
• Greeks were interested in astronomy.
• Greeks used writing as a powerful instrument to record politics,government,law,calculations, history,geography etc.
• Words now we use like
“geometry,geography,drama,physics,arithmatic,biology,astronomy,music,poetry” etc are genetically greek words.
• Poets like Homer,(A blind poet)composed ILLIAD& ODYSSEY.
• Many Greek cities became centres of knowledge,study and experiment.
• They learnt arithmatic with pebbles.
ROMAN LETTERS
• Nearly 2000yrs ago Romans ruled.
• Latin is the classical language of ancient Europe.
• They followed Greek Civilization apart from other things,the value of reading and writing.
• Growth of the mighty Roman Empire influenced Latin language spread.
• Romans took only 21 letters to begin with ,later it became 26.
• 3 Rs – reading,riting,and arithmetic
• Used waxed &wooden writing tablets with Iron Pen ,Levy,Cicero etc great Roman historians.
IN WESTERN EUROPE
* In western Europe ,Teutons(a rough,white tribe) lived on the borders of Roman empire.
* They settled in Britain around 400A.D
* The country came to be known as”Angle land” ,later shortened to the name of England.
* Another tribe called the”franks” stayed in France and gave the country its name.
*These tribes learnt many things from the civilized Romans whom they conquered.They learnt latin to talk to their subjects. SCRIBES
• About 500to 1500A.D.,very few people could read or write except the christians monks.
• ILLUMINATOR which meant a monk good at painting,would be given the special work of decorating capital letters attractively in gold,green and red colours.
• Churches were the only centres of learning.In those days education was only suitable for becoming a monk or a priest in those days.
• The monks often kept diaries or chronicles to note down important happenings.
TOWARDS RENAISSANCE
• By the end of middle age learning spread in England and Europe.So grammar schools were started to teach latin.
• An English Reformer called JOHN Wycliffe translated the entire Bible into English for the first time.
Foreign lands attracted the brave and the adventurous travelled to many countries and wrote many books.
• Latin soon replaced by modern European languages in literature.
• Wonderful progress in art and thought began in about the 14th century.It was called Renaissance.
BEHIND THE BAMBOO CERTAIN
• Around 2850B.C.the chinese script was developed by Fu-si.
• They drew the pictures of creatures,like men,animals,birds,fish,snakes and so on.
• Observed footprints and birds claw marks in the sand and other surfaces for ideas.
• Chinese spoken words are simply syllables or combinations of dimple syllables.
• Even today the chinese and the japanese take genuine pride in their calligraphy.
SECRETS OF THE INDUS
• The Indus valley civilization was highly sophisticated civilization with well-planned cities.
• Wide roads,Multi-storey houses of burnt bricks.
• Hundreds of seals marked with peculiar bits of pictorial writings and vivid engravings of animals ,birds and human beings have been found.
• Inscriptions found on pottery ,clay and even copper tablets. ARYANS
• Aryans came to India from.Central Asia.
• They spoke Sanskrit.This would later become the source of the group of languages known as Indo-Aryan.
• Sanskrit became the language of learning. All the classics were written in sanskrit.
KHAROSTHI &BRAHMI
• Around 250 B.C. Kharosthi script came to be used in north_west.
• Kharosthi script was widely used for commercial purposes and many writings have been found on stone ,manuscripts coins and letters.
• Brahmi was a written form which was written from left to right..It was widely used in North India around 400B.C.
DEVANAGARI
• Devanagari took shape between the 7th and 9th centuries A.D.
• “Devanagari “means _”Divine script of the city” and was used for writing sanskrit.
• Indian scripts were written on both sides of palm leaves or Talapatra with a sharp iron spike.
ARABIC SCRIPT
• In undivided India,Urdu was the chief script taught to school children in North India.
• Urdu belongs to the family of Arabic Script.
• It was originated in the 4th century’s A.D.
• Urdu actually used as camp language when Persian was the official language of Medieval India.
NASKHI
• The Arabic calligrapher wrote with a reed pen called a “KALAM”
It was around 1000 A.D.that Persians developed an easy and elegant style,more suited to handwriting on Papyrus or paper.This was called the Naskhi Script. LEARNING _ THE INDIAN WAY
• In the ancient period, there were no books, so ancestors imparted all knowledge orally.Many deep thinkers and wise learners men among them.
• When writing was developed ,Vedas came to be written down.Children in gurukulas were taught to recite them as part of their curriculum.
• The earliest known centre of higher education in North_ West India was at Takshasila or Taxila founded by Bharata in the name of his son “Taksha”.
• Benaras was another great centre of learning.
• 4th &5th centuryA.D.was the golden age of art and literature .
• Travellers and Scholars came from far and near to study .So eminent teachers were there in the centres of learning.
• By 11th century Sanskrit began to decline and Hindi began to wide spread.
• Madaras were set up in Mosques.
• During the reign of Akbar ,everyone had a chance to study the subjects of one's choice other than religion. MAKING OF PAPER
• Paper was first made probably in Egypt, and then in China .
• Egyptians made their book from the stem of the Papyrus plant.
GUTENBERG
With achievement by Johannes GutenBerg of Germany in the middle of the 15th century.Printing made a revolutionary stride.
Today we live in the world of sophisticated electronic publishing.In the contemporary world printed page has been taken over by computerized machines.
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