J.P. Reid — Books on Grammar & English | Airlift Publishing

J.P. Reid writes about language, and she comes by it honestly. She taught school for more than twenty years — grammar, German, drama, and math — and colleagues who came to her for advice took to calling her the Grammar Guru. Her books turn that classroom experience into reference and delight in equal measure: Speakest Thou English? on the history, humor, and trivia of the language, Writest Thou English? on writing and proofreading, Jack, Wherefore Climbest Thou the Beanstalk? on making sense of older English, and the Grammar Survival Guidebook. She has recently been writing fairy tales — humorous takes on the ones we all grew up with.

She writes from her other lives, too. Decades of teaching private piano and organ produced Notable Notes and its companion workbook. Born with hearing loss and later losing her peripheral vision to Usher Syndrome, she wrote Usher: Deaf and Blind, part explanation and part personal account. And somewhere in there, a book of frog facts called Fly Catcher.

Her father was a theater professor and her mother a schoolteacher with a minor in English. A childhood performance of The Diary of Anne Frank moved her to start a diary, and she has kept one faithfully ever since. She has studied German, Japanese, Spanish, and ASL, lived in Germany and Arkansas, and traveled through Japan, Mexico, Canada, and much of Europe. She began piano at seven and organ as a teenager and has accompanied countless choirs and soloists. She also illustrated Connie Pope’s storybook The Dwarf That Mixed Up Christmas. She is the mother of five daughters and a son.