L Is for Lollygag:... || Fun words, fun presentation
Written: Mar 21 '09 (Updated Mar 21 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A visual delight, as well as a rich language/word 'treat'...
Cons: More for fun than serious ... but is that really a 'Con'..??
The Bottom Line: If you are a word lover ...or know a young reader who needs to see how fun words can be, this book demonstrates 'pleasure reading' can be just that.
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| sleeper54's Full Review: |
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Everyone likes to find and use new words, right..?? Especially middle school age kids who are at that stage where they think 'the weirder something is, the cooler it is.' They may desperately want to fit in with their peers ...but if the words they learn and the books they read can be wild, wacky, and humorous ...so much the better.
L Is for LollyGag: Quirky Words for a Clever Tongue is just that type of book. I would have loved this book as a preteen and I think my son would have loved it too at that age. Actually ...I think he is still far enough 'off plumb' that he would find it fun and informative reading it as a twenty-something. Indeed, any 'fun-minded' reader will enjoy it.
More than an A-B-C book but less than a formal dictionary, L is for Lollygag introduces several hundred words (no, I am not counting them...) to the beginning independent reader. But these are not your Dad's words; or even your English teacher's words.
Let me pick one at random to illustrate, say the first word on page 100:
– skedaddle (skih-DA-duhl) verb
to make a break for it or get going while the going's good
Ok, the third word. It seemed more illustrative than shindig or sidewinder...
Each word is bolded, a phonetic pronunciation follows, the word type, and a short, usually somewhat silly definition.
A few other examples of definitions only:
– amok: going crazy or out of control, like children who've had too much sugar. People usually run amok because walking amok would take too long.
– ghastly: horrific, frightening, or simply unpleasant. Things that can be ghastly: the scene of a murder, the color of vomit, and your sister's new haircut.
– peccadillo: a very small wrongdoing, nothing worth getting your underwear in a twist about.
As you can see, not definitions that you would get from your fifth-grade English teacher.
Printed using a two-color process, the book is filled with colorful, silly pictures. (See the cover image above. Also, check the shopping links to find the 'Look Inside' feature at Amazon.) There are also numerous 'old-timey' retro-feel clip art images. The use of elaborately detailed large sized letter images leading each section, intricate scroll work, and humorous typography (the entry for askew is tilted ...well it is askew on the page; behemoth is in a large, large type; the flummox entry is printed upside down ...as is willy-nilly later in the book) all lead to a cacophony of sights and words that brings something new and unexpected to every page.
There are other surprises as well:
– shout outs to authors known for imagination and creative worlds ...Shakespeare, Rowling, Tolkien, Carroll, and other notables.
– lists here and there of unusual colors (aubergine anyone..??); "oodles of interjections and exclamations" (...Gee whillikers!, Yowza!); and several others
– examples of fun wordplay ...spoonerisms, oxymorons, palindromes, and more.
The whole package feels much like something the Monty Python group might put together, but without the raunchy and with the 'silly' factor tweaked down just a bit.
The Bottom Line
If you have a youngster that needs something 'extra', a little 'different' to pull them into a book, Chronicle Books' L Is for LollyGag: Quirky Words for a Clever Tongue might be just the thing.
If you are an adult that likes to look at words at little differently you will enjoy it also.
My reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic reviews
Certified 'lean-n-mean' review
Learn more about L Is for LollyGag:... at the Chronicle Books website
URL: http://tinyurl.com/cvrp9u
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Recommended:
Yes
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sleeper54
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