Thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher for giving me an advanced copy of this book to read and review.

I loved this book. Dreyer's style is light, and the examples in this young readers version are high school appropriate. I learned (or was reminded) of many details that hopefully will make my writing better. I do think this isn't a book most young readers will pick up on their own, but one that librarians and teachers will need to point out to language lovers (or assign in high school classes!)

I'm writing this review months after reading the book and I am holding my classroom copy in my hand. This is a useful tool to have in the reference section. I am hoping to use it so that students can use it to clarify whatever grammatical doubts they may have, but I also plan of reading a handful of Dreyer's bon mots to whet their appetite and make them curious about reading a grammar book.

I can feel your eye roll from here, but a handful of my students have appreciated unconventional grammar guides throughout the years, I'm hoping that'll be the case for this one.

I am so excited about this and will definitely be using it in my classroom next year. (I'm also a teacher IRL, not just a romance person, that's for fun).

3.5/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for sending me a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

First off, I should clarify I have not been able to read the original version of this book yet, so I won’t be able to compare the young readers’ version to it. Hopefully someday soon a copy of Dreyer’s English will make it into my hands, but until then I can only review Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) as a standalone.

Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) is a quick overview on ways to improve your writing, from punctuation and word choice to verifying quotes and general consistency.

I feel the strongest part of this book is the variety of information it is able to quickly cover, and I often enjoyed the Dreyer’s humor throughout (although, since this book is geared for ages 10 and up, I’m not sure how much of that humor will be accessible for younger readers). I also appreciated that the book begins with a disclaimer: no stylebook is ever 100% correct 100% of the time and many stylebooks disagree with each other. With that in mind, Dreyer is the copy chief of Random House, so this stylebook is written with their set of rules in mind. So, Dreyer explains, with this book he has set out to 1) write about the issues he most often sees while copyediting and how he attempts to address them, and 2) not try to replicate the guidance of other stylebooks.

I do have a couple of issues with this book. First, while I think the tone will be inviting to most readers, I’m not sure if the intended audience has been properly narrowed down: throughout the book the intended audience seems to alternate between middle school and high school students. For parts of the book this may not be an issue, but since there is a substantial difference between a 6th grader and a 12th grader (or even an 8th grader and an 11th grader), I think it’s something to keep in mind (especially since every teenager I’ve ever come across will immediately stop reading if they perceive a book as even beginning to talk down to them).

Second, there’s an occasional lack of clarity with the examples provided and other times a noncommittal attitude towards certain topics. Although, since we’ve already learned that language is surprisingly flexible, perhaps this isn’t an issue - except that most of the other topics have defined opinions. Within my library, if my younger patrons come to me searching for a book to improve their writing, they’re generally looking for clear explanations because they are having trouble fully grasping their teacher’s explanation. Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) doesn’t really fill that need.

Third, there is a general mix of descriptiveness and prescriptiveness in the suggestions offered. Of course, everyone has their personal preferences, but Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) switches between descriptive and prescriptive without differentiating between the two. For instance, at one point Dreyer argues against the use of everyone’s friend “irregardless” (prescriptive, mentioned in Chapter 7 of my ARC) and then later praises the making up of words (descriptive, mentioned in Chapter 7 of my ARC slightly after the section on “irregardless”). Both instances are on the ‘making up’ of words but have conflicting answers. [*Note: I’m not arguing either for or against the word “irregardless” but I would like to point out that this polarizing word was included in Merriam-Webster’s words of the week in July 2020 (https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-words-of-the-week-july-03-2020), and, to quote them “has been in widespread and near-constant use since 1795.”]

Finally, I completely disagree with the section on capitalizing names. If someone has expressly stated a preference for lowercase to be used, to deliberately ignore that preference is akin to misspelling their name. So, it’s “bell hooks” not “Bell Hooks”. PLEASE respect that and don’t choose to capitalize names just because you think they should be. Names are an integral part to identity and have a history of being ignored and/or deliberately changed by whites. It is up to each individual to choose their identity and how it is expressed, not those around them.

In all, I think Dreyer’s English (Adapted for Young Readers) can be summed up as follows: the English language is complicated and doesn’t really follow a well-defined set of rules (especially since our language loves to steal things from other languages at random), so if you are having problems with convention, consensus, clarity, and/or comprehension in your writing…you might be best off just trying to rewrite it.

Thank you again to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for the privilege of reviewing an ARC.

Dreyer’s English (adapted for young readers) is a valuable and informative text that students can learn from in order to improve their writing skills. The book gives examples of how to overcome certain rules that limit a person’s writing. Also how to use grammar as a tool and not a hindrance. I would highly recommend this book to teachers to help improve and share writing structure and techniques with their students. But overall I would recommend it to students who are tired of formulated sentence structures and are looking to broaden their understanding of the English language and in turn improve their writing abilities.