My daughter came home last night with homework that involved looking up several words in the dictionary. I pulled out my 16 lb 390,000 definition American Heritage beast, and it turned out to be pretty frustrating for her to use. It’s huge, it puts the pronunciation marks in the right in the word listing, which made searching difficult, it has long, difficult to decipher etymologies for each word, and it has really small type. Can anyone recommend a more kid friendly, but still useful and complete, dictionary?
I grew up relying on Funk & Wagnall’s Encyclopedic dictionary. I think that buying a dictionary a child can grow into might actually be the best idea.
I bought my 7yo daughter the Pocket Oxford English Dictionary, which btw does not have the pronunciation anywhere in the entry. This is the one she’s going to use for a loooong time, and she is learning to use it but I still help her out.
If she’s going to be on her own, or just reading for fun, I hand her the Childcraft Dictionary I grew up with; it’s just right for a kid to have fun with and has neat articles on word and name history to read.
How advanced is she? The Oxford First Dictionary is probably too young for her at this point, but maybe not
http://www.oup.com/oxed/dictionaries/first_dictionary
(click on look inside on the right of the page) - it looked perfect for a young reader when I glanced through it at the bookstore.
For the next age up there’s the Oxford Junior dictionary
http://www.oup.com/oxed/dictionaries/junior_dictionary