Description

Sir Keith Wordsnot and the Sentence Symphony is a wildly funny middle-grade adventure about a family for whom words are a way of life, and occasionally, a way of breaking reality.

At 17½ Glossary Crescent live the Wordsnots: Sebastian, who speaks brilliantly but spells like his letters have escaped on a school trip. Penelope, who writes like a dream but forgets that punctuation exists. George, who takes every sentence so literally it constitutes a hazard. And Sir Keith, a pompous, grammar-obsessed parrot who is definitely not an honorary parent, except that he absolutely is.

When an ordinary family meeting about communication goes spectacularly wrong, words begin to behave very badly indeed. What follows is part language adventure, part household emergency, and entirely, gloriously, out of control.

Sir Keith Wordsnot and the Sentence Symphony is a warm, riotously funny novel for readers aged 8-12 that celebrates neurodivergent thinking, different communication styles, and the spectacular mess that happens when a family of word enthusiasts takes language just a little too seriously. With laugh-out-loud moments, an ensemble of brilliantly voiced characters, and grammar concepts woven in so naturally you’ll barely notice them over Keith’s shouting, this is a book for every kind of reader, whatever kind of thinker they are.