I'd hoped to use this book as the basis for some lessons (I teach English, among other things, to struggling learners) on diagramming sentences, but it turns out this isn't that kind of book. Kitty Burns Florey does helpfully direct the reader to some books to guide the use of sentence diagramming in the classroom. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog is a cultural, social and personal history of sentence diagramming in American classrooms. It's the latter dimension of the book--particularly the touching afterward--that makes it such a quick, elegant and enjoyable read.

Like balancing simple chemical equations and demonstrating Euclidian theorems, diagramming not-too-complex sentences was a sometimes fun part of my schooling in the 1940s and 50s. Kitty Burns Florrey's interesting book brings all that back for a kid like me who wanted to understand how things worked.

Though tree diagrams today might be a better way to demonstrate structure and syntax of an English sentence, diagramming was what we had back then. It showed how a sentence was put together with parts of speech, nouns, adverbs and such. Parts of sentences, clauses and phrases and all, were where some really good sentences might not allow themselves to be diagrammed.

Florrey's diagram examples, especially the two-page ones, are probably the best part of the book. Or maybe the stories about Sister Bernadette's classroom were even better. ( )

I got this recommendation from rebeccanyc, and picked up a used copy at a local bookshop. It’s an engaging history of how diagramming sentences came to be so in vogue in American grammar schools. I was intrigued by the topic because I distinctly remember having to diagram sentences around the fourth or fifth grade, and I remember really liking it. It appeals to my sense of order and slotting things into their appropriate places. My memory of exactly how to diagram has faded, however, and I had hoped this book would fill in the gaps. It didn’t really do that, because there isn’t much detail about the nuts and bolts of diagramming. That was a disappointment but overall I’m happy to know more about how diagramming sentences came to be. Florey peppers the book liberally with very engaging side notes about authors like Gertrude Stein and others whose prose is virtually impossible to diagram. Having only read a little bit of Stein, I’d have to agree on that point! ( )

It's like revisiting junior high. What was then considered a new methodology of combining aspects of math & English into a more familiar format? I had forgotten how much more complex a curriculum is than how it is used as you get more educational experience. ( )

The heart of this book was an analysis of different authors' writing styles, laid out neatly in facts of education and origin and diagrammed clearly in their more famous sentences ("Poetry & Grammar," ch 4). Also of good value were the histories of sentence diagramming ("General Rules," ch 3), and a more linguistic evaluation of the use of diagramming in a cultural context ("Youse ain't got no class," ch 5). The playful delight and scholarly interest of these chapters was, unfortunately, slightly concealed by a veneer of nostalgia that completely overwhelmed the chapters earlier and later. ( )