Tag Archives: kids book

The Dictionary Of Difficult Words: Great kids book for all ages

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The Dictionary of Difficult Words: With more than 400 perplexing words to test your wits! by Jane Solomon, illustrated by Louise Lockhart* is a grandiloquent lionization of lexicon, with a plethora of terms allowing you to emulate an egghead as you enunciate extemporaneously. No flapdoodle in this tome, a true juggernaut of of pithy cirumlocutious verbiage.

This is actually a really fun family read, coffee table in format, and I promise, it will be on my coffee table through the holiday seasons. I suppose it is a kids book, but my kid can have it when I’m done with it.

This dictionary has some helpful front matter to assist in understanding, learning, and pronouncing hard words.

The illustrations are charming and helpful. The definitions are engaging and accurate.


Jane Solomon is a lexicographer based in Oakland, California. She spends her days writing definitions and working on various projects for different dictionaries and reference sites. She was at Dictionary.com for seven years, and she’s also worked on projects for Oxford, Cambridge, HarperCollins, Scholastic, Thinkmap, and K Dictionaries. She’s a member of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, the group that decides what new emoji pop up on our devices. She has a twin sister who is also a lexicographer. Louise Lockhart has illustrated about one gazijllian excellent children’s books.

One Iguana Two Iguanas: Children’s evolutionary biology book, with lizards!

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The land and marine iguanas of the Galapagos Islands are famous. Well, the marine iguanas are famous, and the land iguanas, representing the ancestral state for that clade of two species, deserve a lot of credit as well. The story of these iguanas is integral with, and parallel to, the story of the Galapagos Islands, and of course, that story is key in our understanding of and pedagogy of evolutionary biology, and Darwin’s history. Continue reading One Iguana Two Iguanas: Children’s evolutionary biology book, with lizards! →

Climate change book for young readers

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What are Global Warming and Climate Change?: Answers for Young Readers is a fairly unique book, as far as I know. It explains climate change, contextualized global warming, discusses causes and consequences and directly addresses the politics of climate change and global warming. The official book description:

“Global warming is one of the most talked about science subjects today. Maybe you have seen pictures of polar bears or other animals stranded atop floating chunks of melting ice. Perhaps you have heard about or lived through extreme weather – hurricanes, floods, water shortages, heat waves, or electricity blackouts. Many of these events can stem from the world getting warmer. As that happens, the climate changes, too. This book helps young readers understand the sciences used to study global warming. Each chapter addresses specific questions about why the temperatures of the earth’s air and oceans are rising. The information presented aligns with the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: that most of the warming observed over the last half-century is due to human activities and that the impacts of global warming will be significantly negative. Using a question-and-answer format supplemented by hands-on activities, this book fosters an understanding of the complex processes at work in global warming while also enabling youngsters to think critically about their future. McCutcheon ends his book by offering young readers productive ways to think about – and act on – changes in the environment contributing to climate change. McCutcheon taps his mastery of a complicated, highly charged topic to permit young readers to become informed consumers of sciences associated with the most urgent topic of their future – global warming.“

Perfect for an earth science or environmental science class in middle school or for the youngish home schooler. Now we need one for high school!

It is a textbook like hard cover, nicely laid out and richly illustrated. The book does a great job of dealing with modeling, climate-weather distinction, and the longer term history of human impact on the environment. The activities are fun and useful. Personally, I want every 9-12 year old to have this book.