Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary

My grandson loves reading and he reads above his age so he needed some word help. The book is terrific with plenty of interesting side lights to help a reader expand their vocabulary. Pages are handleable by a 7 year old, no ripping or tearing.

My daughter was so excited looking through and finding words. A great tool for school and we use it when playing scrabble.

This book has proven valuable even with a few words missing (no dictionary has all the words, does it?) However, we are using this for homeschool purposes and imagine my surprise, while teaching about writing and Columbus and the Taino people, that the words “rhetoric” and “indigenous” (respectively) do NOT exist in this book. I don’t fault anyone- it’s not like the entire English language could ever fit in here, however, the word “tweet” (as in the tweets you add to your Twitter account) IS listed, so I’m left wondering who prioritized social media over other words. It is still a valuable resource- my children are learning how to research, investigate, critique, and question articles and their “sources”. Today’s journalists don’t even do that today it seems, and my kids are 7 and 4. For that, I’m giving it 4 stars. I’ll review my opinion in a year if anything else surfaces.

This dictionary is a hardcover. The book is a nice size and gas weight to it. I dont know why that thought it was acceptable to package this item in a bag for delivery with no padding or Cushion. My daughters book arrived damaged, which over rime will become worse. After a brief skim, I like the way dictionary is set up. A great addition to my daughters bookcase.

My daughter (7 years old) loves reading this. Sometimes she’ll sneak it to bed with her or get up and grab it. I can think of much worse things to get frustrated about. Rate it between easy and moderate. Depends on the person.

Our usual dictionary intimidated my son and the long alternate definitions for some words left him overwhelmed, so we ordered this and thought it would be a great entry level dictionary. It is easy to use and the definitions are short (so that is a plus for usability), but it is missing a lot of words that I think are reasonable to have assumed would be in even an entry level dictionary (for example, words common in current events or science). It is turning out to not be that useful to us, because many words that my 8 year old needs help with are not in this dictionary. It might be more appropriate for my 6 year old learning to read.

It is easy for my 9 year old grandson to use

My youngest daughter teaches 5th Grade Language Arts (back when she was in school I think it was ENGLISH class). Anyway, theyve moved the elementary grades into their new building this summer. And she wanted one of the Merrian-Websters Elementary Dictionary, New Edition for each one of her students to have to use. Plus have several for any new students that may come in later. So between me, other family members, and a whole bunch of her friends, she got the number of books she wanted. She is so proud of them.

Truth be told, I actually ordered this dictionary for my grandson due to a one star review from someone who disliked it because there was no reference to a homosexual lifestyle or the alphabet soup lifestyle. Now before you go and flame me with the typical progressive name calling that we have all come to expect, I am a small business owner and I have 2 homosexuals, one female and one male, that work for me. They are respected because they are good people. SO lets take this one step further. The one star reviewer makes no mention that there is also no entry in this dictionary for heterosexual either. A typical move of the progressive indoctrination crowd. Here is a wonderful dictionary that lets children be children. As children age, they can discover and explore in their own appropriate time the vagaries of our age.

I truly commend the colorful layout. The alphabetical colored tabs make it quick & easy to open up the dictionary in the alphabet needed. As an adult, the larger font is easy on my eyes. Im an adult college student and replaced my small Webster Collegiate Dictionary with this one!