Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation (Paperback)

“Peter Piper, without Pretension to Precocity or Profoundness, Puts Pen to Paper to Produce these Puzzling Pages, Purposely to Please the Palates of Pretty Prattling Playfellows, Proudly Presuming that with Proper Penetration it will Probably, and Perhaps Positively, Prove a Peculiarly Pleasant and Profitable Path to Proper, Plain and Precise Pronunciation. “He Prays Parents to Purchase this Playful Performance, Partly to Pay him for his Patience and Pains; Partly to Provide for the Printers and Publishers; but Principally to Prevent the Pernicious Prevalence of Perverse Pronunciation.” Parents and children alike will delight at this recreation of the 1836 book that launched the famously popular Peter Piper on his career of picking pickled peppers by the peck. Along with his alliterative companions, Peter Piper provides a full alphabet of challenging tongue twisters, which will still appeal to the current generation. Illustrated with digital reproductions of the original woodcuts, this is a book every family will enjoy.

Debbie Barry lives with her husband in southeastern Michigan with their two cats, Mister and Goblin. They enjoy exploring history through French and Indian War re-enactment and through medieval re-enactment in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). Debbie grew up in southwestern Vermont, where she heard and collected many family stories that she enjoys retelling as historical fiction for young audiences, and as family and local history for genealogists, as well as memory stories of her own life. Debbie graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in dual majors of social sciences with an education concentration and of English in 2013. She is on hiatus from pursuing her master’s degree in linguistics, specializing in teaching English as a second language (TESOL), at Oakland University, in Rochester, Michigan, as a result of going blind and battling long-term illness. Debbie went blind suddenly, without obvious cause, on December 15, 2014, at the age of 45. Her family, friends, and doctors expected her to give in to the darkness and become bitter and angry. Instead, Debbie chose to adopt a positive attitude, even when she felt anything but positive, and to find as much light as possible in her life. She wrote an autobiographical account of her first full year of living in the twilight semi-vision of blindness to share her experience with others; it was also therapy to help her face the darkness. Before going blind, Debbie was an avid, even voracious, reader. She enjoyed drawing in many traditional media and painting in acrylic, gouache, and watercolor. She enjoyed sewing, crocheting, needlepoint, embroidery, beadwork, spinning, and weaving. Since going blind, Debbie has turned to audio books from Audible.com, BARD Talking Books Library, and on CDs. She crochets blankets and crochets scarves for charity. She makes paper beads to make rosaries for the missions. She has recently begun exploring resuming drawing and painting with the limitations of her vision. Debbie is an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). She is a past member of the LEO Club, the Lions Club, the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), the Girl Scouts, the Explorer Scouts, and the Order of the Eastern Star (OES), as well as various academic and social groups in high school, college, and graduate school. She is a member of the National Honor Society, Phi Theta Kappa, and the Golden Key Honor Society. She likes to be active.