Book Review: The Dictionary of Difficult Words: With More Than 400 Perplexing Words to Test your Wits! by Jane Solomon, Louise Lockhart

The Dictionary of Difficult Words: With More Than 400 Perplexing Words to Test your Wits! was written by Jane Solomon and illustrated by Louise Lockhart. ​What is a bumbershoot? Or a moonbow? And what does it mean when someone absquatulates? Find out all this and more in the Dictionary of Difficult Words. Test your knowledge with more than 400 words to amaze, confuse, and inspire budding wordsmiths (and adults). All of the words featured in this book are difficult to spell, hard to say, and their meanings are obscure to most children (and most adults)! Written with simple, easy-to-understand definitions by lexicographer Jane Solomon, this dictionary celebrates the beauty of the English language for family trivia time spent around the printed page.

The Dictionary of Difficult Words is a fun, educational, and useful book for all ages. I love that the book starts off explaining the various ways readers can explore and enjoy the book. In the beginning there are also great explanations about kinds of words and how to decode intimidating words and how to pronounce them. These are things that will always be helpful, even if I know I mentally mispronounce things all the time- especially if I have only read them and never heard them spoken. I love the words that were chosen for this book. Some are adjectives and adverbs that are used sparingly, but are just great words. Some are just fun to say, like bumbershoot (which I proudly already knew the definition for). I learned a few new words, and am trying to figure out how to use bildungsroman instead of coming of age tale in a book review without sounding pretentious.  The artwork is fun and adds extra layers of understanding, fun, and style to the book.  

The Dictionary of Difficult Words is a great book to have in home, school, and public libraries. It can help teach the use and functionality of dictionaries, and get readers to broaden their personal vocabulary in fun ways. This book is a win all around, and I think I need to add it to my personal collection.