#537 - The Talking Book

by Jane De Suza and illustrated by Siddhi Vartak

“The Talking Book” by Jane De Suza and illustrated by Siddhi Vartak. Published by Penguin. A delightful book about trying to understand the mystery of how we humans have been communicating through talking.

The book talks about the incredible journey of communication through the different time periods of human existence right from the Stone Age to the present and also about what might happen in future. Research and storytelling laced with interesting facts as well as tidbits are interwoven making readers travel through various eras getting a peek into how communication would have happened. While some aspects about the incredible path that languages and talking took to evolve are still shrouded in mystery, there are many theories as to how they grew over time.

The chapters have been categorised under various sections. These talk about how talking must have begun, to the progression into writing from talking, to the creation of languages, to what in our bodies causes us humans to speak, to non human language, to experiments that we have done to find out, to different kinds of words and how they originate, to the twists and turns that languages have taken over the centuries and then ending with what lies in store for us in future with respect to words and talking. Read this unusual book to get answers to many of the curious questions that we can think of when it comes to talking.

The book is a treat for curious minds and makes one ponder. I and my ten year old son had no inkling of what we were getting into when we started reading the book. This is one of those books to be savoured slowly while it takes us on a thrilling ride making us time travel around the world from Stone Age to the current age of AI. There is a good dosage of fun, humour, mystery and craziness making it an enjoyable and engrossing read. Every tale or anecdote narrated is a tiny little piece in the gigantic jigsaw puzzle of the evolution of language. The author’s wittiness and wordplay along with her dog Marco Polo are some of the highlights of the book. It was heartening to read about languages on the brink of dying being saved using quite innovative methods. The story of how a sleeping language was revived after a long gap of 2000 years was such a miraculous one. I liked the way in which the book started with a story set in the Stone Age and ended with a story in the future whose endings are left for us to imagine. Overall this is a refreshing and inquisitive take on a topic that is there all around us. It is worthwhile to take a pause and appreciate the wonder that is speech and communication. This one is going to charm not just children but adults alike.

PS - Another book related to languages in an Indian context which we loved reading earlier is “Taatung Tatung and Other Amazing Stories of India’s Diverse Languages”.

Recommended Age

The book is apt for children aged 10 and above.

Disclaimer - We received this book from the publisher, Penguin India, for review. Thank you to Mansi, from Penguin, for sending across the book!