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By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: September 2, 2011

From Dictionaries to a grammar guide to a book of homographs, the following list of books features some of our favorite school tools and brain ticklers…

Scholastic Children’s Dictionary

by Scholastic

Reading level: Ages 8 and up

Hardcover: 800 pages

Publisher: Scholastic Reference; New edition (July 1, 2010)

Source: Publisher

Publisher’s synopsis: The bestselling Scholastic Children’s Dictionary is brand new for 2010! Some of the outstanding new features include: brand new cover and interior design, more than 1,000 all new photographs and illustrations, and double the current number of word histories and sample sentences. New entries and definitions have been written by prominent lexicographers and reviewed by an advisory board of educators and librarians. Bonus material includes a thesaurus and specially commissioned endpaper maps.

With exciting new features, accessible definitions, and helpful illustrations and photographs throughout, the new Scholastic Children’s Dictionary is an essential resource that belongs in every home, classroom, and library.

Add this book to your collection: Scholastic Children’s Dictionary

by Marvin Terban

Reading level: Ages 8 and up

Paperback: 256 pages

Publisher: Scholastic Reference; Student edition (August 1, 2011)

Source: Publisher

Publisher’s synopsis: The ultimate resource for proper grammar.

The SCHOLASTIC GUIDE TO GRAMMAR is an easy-to-use, color-coded, tabbed guide packed full of information, examples, and tips for English language arts success. Write a paper, meet new people, apply for a job, and more, with perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Join “Professor Grammar” on this guided journey through the intricacies of the English language.

Add this book to your collection: Scholastic Guide to Grammar

Clifford’s Big Dictionary

by Scholastic

Reading level: Ages 4 and up

Hardcover: 128 pages

Publisher: Cartwheel Books (July 1, 2011)

Source: Publisher

Publisher’s synopsis: The perfect back-to-school reference book for the early elementary set!

From Scholastic, the most trusted name in learning (R), comes this picture dictionary featuring America’s favorite big red dog, Clifford!

The 128-page dictionary

Zoola Palooza is coming to your town on June 21^st.  Unfortunately, this tour is sold out.

But fortunately, I documented the long awaited show in my latest book, Zoola Palooza: A Book of Homographs. 

The concert event features some of the best animal acts in the music biz – Fluff Daddy, Seals & Crawfish, Carmen Chameleon and many others. 

That said – the strongest features of the Zoola Palooza show are the Homographs. And they don’t even have a hit single. 

Homographs are words that are spelled the same, but sound different and have different meanings.  For example, “Billy the striped BASS opens the show wearing a big striped BOW tie.  He took a gracious BOW from the top of his BASS fiddle.”

I’m also a musician, and I’ve always wanted to tie music imagery into one of my books – especially rock n’ roll.   This seemed like the perfect subject.

The book is a follow-up to my 2007 release, Dear Deer: A Book of Homophones, which takes place at a zoo.  I wanted to continue with animals as the central characters, but I felt it was time to change locations.   So I just took the zoo on the road and hired a few professional musicians along the way.   It was an exclusive tour – tickets were only sold throughout the wild kingdom.

This new environment also gave me the opportunity to pay tribute to many real bands such as The Beatles, Fleet Foxes, The Bird and The Bee, etc.   I even included certain bands that I never really liked.  But hey, they were a perfect fit.   Some bands go way back – even before iPods!

The book is the natural follow up to Dear Deer because homographs are the opposite of homophones.  I’m a sucker for balance. Once I round off the trilogy with homonyms, we’ll have it all covered.     

These grammar books are a lot of fun for me.  And they’re a nice silly release after finishing up one of my non-fiction books that require lots of intense research and study.   

Time to start thinking about a location for the next one.  In the meantime, here’s a little sneak preview from the concert.

-Gene Barretta