Such a cool book!! I really enjoyed reading this and learning about new words. My first book to read by this author but can't wait to read more!

What a great resource for middle-grade kids, who enjoy confounding and disgusting their parents. Many of the words included are ones I learned as a child in that very expensive Wordly Wise vocabulary tool. Highly recommend for elementary and middle school libraries.

10 year old me would have loved this book and spent hours poring over every page! Adult me still thinks it's awesome.

The author makes a wonderful case for exuberant, expressive language. We have such a flamboyantly varied lexicon to work with in English, plus an infinite number of loanwords and new creations--why limit ourselves to just the workaday regulars??? New, fun words are grouped loosely by concept (travel, feelings, nature, etc) and are broken down with a pronunciation guide, definition, and use in a sentence. Interesting roots/origins or pop culture references are also explained.

This would be a wonderful gift for any budding word nerd and also a great addition to elementary and middle school classroom and school libraries!

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!

This was a very successful expanded word list for the curious and young – lots of peculiar words that sound unlikely, prehistoric, cool or plain bizarre, grouped by subject. Every one gets a pronunciation hint, a definition and a sentence putting them in context. Some get a sidebar on where the word comes from, or how your parents made the word famous by watching animated TV turtles saying it a lot (for example), and it is sometimes a bit annoying that scrolling through this those sidebars came to my attention before the actual words in question, but that's by the by and is no major problem.

Coming to this from the UK it was very pleasing to see this would be a valid purchase outside North America. Yes, it has a few words we very seldom, if ever, use, like 'stemwinder' as a superlative of its kind, and yes, now and again the pronunciation was pointing to a way of speaking not common to Britain (their way with 'fracas' is most alien indeed), but the strike rate was strong. It's a little shame we only get three or four words on many a page, and sometimes much less, so this isn't as exhaustive as things might suggest, but this was a fine achievement in my mind.

Every educator and even parents should have this fun book! What an awesome way to show how words can be fun. “Research says academic and life success can be tied to a strong vocabulary.” This book with some illustrations, the part of speech, showing the word used in a sentence and sometimes synonyms makes the learning of new words all the more fun. The words are broken into “word squads” that show how the words share something in common such as head tuners, shock value, G.O.A.T. and what a zoo. This book truly shows how words are amazing and ways they can be used. Learning about the history of some of the words made it even more interesting.