Reviewed by Sarah Buck, Continuations Bibliographer
This book is a light history of sentence diagramming, a pedagogy that began in 1877 with the publication of Reed and Kellogg's textbook, Higher Lessons in English. The author's fond thesis in Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog is that sentence diagramming is "a bit like art, a bit like mathematics." Florey has an amused, playful style that makes the book enjoyable reading.
Toward the end of the book, Florey offers a delightful commentary on bad grammar usage. However, she frequently cites examples of poorly written sentences but makes no effort to correct them. Overall, the book is a charming little piece on the social history of sentence diagramming, but the snippets of errata at times cause the book to feel like a snooty dinner party: a dinner party where the hostess tells abstruse jokes that few guests understand.
Because Florey doesn't include rules for diagramming sentences or show how different schools of linguistics view it, the reader cannot trust her as an authority on the subject. She offers similes for old-fashioned grammar teaching methods, but no reasons why the similes might be true. It causes me to wonder how a grammarian can be so lacking in expository logic, since grammar itself is a system of logic.
The author does not argue that diagramming sentences was meant to stand on its own as the sole foundation of understanding grammar, yet she often tries to debunk said notion. This lack of clarity is unfortunate, because the subject is one worth exploring. Further, the book makes too many assumptions in guessing which famous writers may or may not have studied sentence diagramming. The author did no primary research to uncover a level of history which would have made the book interesting or even important. This book could have been much more with the help of a reference librarian.
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog is enjoyable insofar that the reader can tell the author enjoys working with sentences. The final pages of the book include a nice summation of the beauty of diagramming. I especially like how Florey points out that diagramming is something that's clearly correct: it's a part of English class where those students who avoided creative writing could flourish: "Brilliant diagramming, unlike brilliant writing, was something that could be learned." Unfortunately, she has not introduced anything new or even presented history with any particular significance. She dismisses the usefulness of sentence diagramming throughout the book. For this reason, the book is recommended for recreational reading and not for a scholarly collection.
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