Colorful and whimsical, this one is a fun way to, gasp, learn. I have to admit, I was intrigued after seeing he'd used the word "daisy" as an example in the blurb. My dog's name is Daisy and I use her name at the title of my book review blog, so there was curiosity. After reading it, I looked over at her. Yep, eyes ever lowering, she was ready to go curl up safe and sound in bed only to arise bright and bouncy again tomorrow. The word daisy comes from an old English term meaning "day's eye", so named because the flower daisy basically curls its petals up over its "eye" at night and opens at dawn. Yep, I had no clue at the time I named her but fits my Daisy perfectly.
In any case, although I question the target of children for this book, there's much to find, giggle over, and perhaps discuss with adults as they browse the colorful illustrations by Ian Morris and read Wilson's light doses of info and humor. He's selected four words per letter, introducing the first of each set with a humorous, short poem. Don't worry, nothing heavy, with the emphasis of cute and funny. Each word is fully illustrated, often blending from one page to the other, with snippets of into on word origin, meaning, and when appropriate, a bit of history. I did question the use of guillotine as one of the words but, well, who are we kidding. Kids love that sorta thing. They'll find words such as bumf, clodhopper, frippery, kindergarten, ogre, quignog, and zombie among many others.
The drawings are reasonably realistic but whimsical in nature, hence the Diplodocus is a lovely shade of, well, blue polka-dots. I'm assured that likely isn't realistic but it fits the tone of the book, fun and quizzical looking as good ol' Diplodocus (oh, okay, it's a dinosaur) is. In other words, while there is much to entertain younger children, older children and those of us who are, well, not children can find much to amuse ourselves in this book. Thanks #NetGalley and #QuartoPublishingGroup for letting me take a sneak peek. Also to #words&pictures, the original publisher. They're right. Every word does tell a story to those of us who care to listen.
No comments:
Post a Comment