The List

 I bought this book purely because of the quote on the back. 

How many words do you need to survive? What a compelling question! "The List" is a children's book that takes place in a post-apocalyptic society that is dealing with the catastrophic effects of climate change. Letta is the apprentice to the Wordsmith, who collects forgotten words and archives them. They speak "List" which is a condensed version of English.  In the beginning of the story, Benjamin, the Wordsmith, is asked to pare down The List to 500 words. And this is where my brain took flight. Could I live with just 500 words? 

For most of you, this thought might have ended here, and you would have just enjoyed the book! For me, I set about to see how many words I actually need. Of course making an actual list seemed cumbersome, so I went to my travel blog for some data points. I printed out our last Thelma & Louise blog, "The Road Not Taken",  and went to work. 

I wanted to know how many unique words I used in one entry. I felt, at the start, like this was a simple enough project to undertake, but it took gobs more time than expected. So much more time, that I knew it was silly to forge ahead. And yet...  I had to figure it out! So, in "The Road Not Taken" I used 231 independent, unique words. First of all, I'm pretty puffed up about my excellent word choice! :) And secondly, that's 1/2 (almost) of the allotted 500 words on "The List".  I used very common words that one might use over and over again (should, we, been), but there were also words that were very specific to the trip: ranching, wildfire, jackrabbit. And there were $64,000 words like remnant, resilience and thwarted, that while amazing, aren't super practical for everyday usage. And gobs of fun words that went unused: periwinkle, wonky, sequoia... Bottom line, this girl could not survive with just 500.

Spoiler alert on the book: 

For some reason this defined word list in the book freaked me out a little. Probably because everything seems like a possibility this year. ;) In the book, the "government" attempts to govern through a control of language. They prohibit people from using words like hope, future, heart, thank you (and a myriad of others).

In the story, through a series of events, Letta becomes the Wordsmith and finds out that the town leaders plan to wipe out language entirely by messing with everyone's temporal lobes through the town water supply (AHHHHH!!!).  After preventing the disaster, the book ends with Letta on the run, but vowing to save words for her people. I cried! Although that's not a good indicator; I cry at the end of most books. 

I think in the last year, or three..., many of us have come to grips with what we would stand up for. What we champion, what we march for, and what changes we have to see in the world.  In April after many words had entered our vocabulary with gusto, Webster added the following words to their list: self-isolate, PPE, epidemic curve, and many more. While I would love to unlearn any of these words, what a blessing that we live in a place where words are added to our language at a pretty decent rate.   I would definitely, most certainly, fight for words and the ability to read them and write them. 

If you have a middle grade reader who might like this book, and there's NO CHANCE they will be in my 5th grade class this year, I highly recommend it. :) 

The List

By Patricia Forde