 Theasaurus
Books of synonyms and antonyms.
Scholastic Children's Thesaurus (Scholastic Reference)
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Scholastic Children's Thesaurus (Scholastic Reference)
What would you do if your teacher told you to stop using the word "nice" so much? If you had the Scholastic Children's Thesaurus, you'd flip through it until you found "nice" between "new" and "noise." Then you'd find your options: "pleasant," "agreeable," "good-natured," "delightful," and "fantastic" (defined as "extremely nice or good!"). Nearby, a color bar warns, "Nice is a very general word to describe someone you like or something that makes you feel good, but it is not very specific. Be careful not to overuse it. Often a stronger or more specific word is better." At this point, you might be rolling your eyes because your teacher already said all that, but you'll be a more pleasant, agreeable, good-natured, delightful, and fantastic writer for your efforts! John K. Bollard's thesaurus, playfully illustrated by Mike Reed, contains more than 500 main "headwords" and 2,500 synonyms, but if you can't find the word you're looking for--"energetic," for example--you can flip to the index in the back where you'll find "Energetic--See Lively." Lively leads you to "active," "energetic," and "vigorous." All synonyms include a definition as well as one or more sample sentences. This fine thesaurus--paired with the Scholastic Children's Dictionary--will help any young writer make appropriate word choices, think more critically about language, and therefore proceed to the head of the class! (Ages 9 to 13) --Karin Snelson
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The American Heritage Children's Thesaurus
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The American Heritage Children's Thesaurus
Is this a conventional thesaurus? Regular and standard? Or would you say it was more extraordinary--exceptional and outstanding? Paul Hellweg's The American Heritage Children's Thesaurus is both, actually. It provides everything you'd expect from a children's thesaurus--4,000 words with over 36,000 synonyms--but it is unusually clear and colorfully presented. Each deep purple entry includes its part of speech in italics, and lists the suggested synonyms in bold, best matches first. Each word is used in a sentence to clarify its meaning. Color photographs are sprinkled throughout for visual relief, and "Antonyms" and "Word Groups" boxes help expand vocabulary choices. Word groups are reserved for words like "international," which doesn't have a real synonym but a cluster of closely related words such as "communal, global, national, planetary, universal," and "worldwide." If your favorite students tend to overuse words like "nice," "funny," and "weird" (and who doesn't, really?), this handy reference will have them turning a phrase with finesse. (Ages 8 to 12)
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Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary & Thesaurus, Electronic Edition
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Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary & Thesaurus, Electronic Edition
The 1998 10th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary marks the 100th anniversary of this distinguished and popular reference standard, and this is more than just an interesting statistic--it means that Merriam-Webster brings years of experience and reams of citation files to the creation of this latest edition. Improving on their last dictionary, they've added more than 100 pictorial illustrations and supplemented the synonym paragraphs with examples. Along with the English dictionary, which forms the heart of the reference, the editors at Merriam-Webster have included a brief introduction to the English language and a history of the English dictionary, a guide to pronunciation, and a series of appendices that include chemical element abbreviations and symbols, foreign words and phrases, extensive sections with biographical and geographical names, signs and symbols, and a handbook of style. But getting back to the book itself--it's impressively comprehensive for a collegiate dictionary, with more than 215,000 definitions. Each item includes a pithy wealth of information, with first usage date, etymology, and pronunciation, and clear, precise definitions. In addition, there are often usage notes, synonym cross-references, illustrative quotations, variant spellings and pronunciations, regional labels, and information on capitalization, function, and inflections. Then there are the extra touches. Under bible, for example, there's a chart detailing books of the Old Testament, Jewish Scripture, Protestant apocrypha, and books of the New Testament. Under months is a table listing the months of the principal calendars--Gregorian, Jewish, and Islamic. And wonderful line drawings illustrate terms such as mackerel, lyrebird, hedgehog, and the ancient Celtic stringed instrument known as a crowd. All this makes it a valuable reference--detailed enough for editors and writers, accessible enough for students and casual definition seekers, updated with the new vocabulary of technology, and rigorous enough for the linguistic perfectionists. --Stephanie Gold
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Scholastic Student Thesaurus
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Scholastic Student Thesaurus
Any young student should find this intuitive, well-designed thesaurus quite helpful, as well as useful, practical, handy, beneficial, and versatile. If you have an aspiring wordsmith on your hands--or just a kid who's renowned for his prolific deployment of the words nice and okay--this 204-page thesaurus offers well over 1,000 primary entries and more than 10,000 supplementary entries using a clever on-the-page index. Instead of a traditional index, the Scholastic Student Thesaurus lists supplemental entries alphabetically on every single page. For example, helpful doesn't appear between helper and herb as a primary entry, but the index below on the same page refers young synonym-searchers to the main entry for useful. Each entry also contains part-of-speech labels, and many include usage notes and other synonym and antonym cross-references. With its clean look, thoughtful introduction, and kid-friendly accessibility, the Scholastic Student Thesaurus makes a fine introduction to what may quickly become an indispensable, essential, fundamental writing tool. (Ages 10 and older) --Paul Hughes
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