The Word Collector

It's hard to decide what's the bigger charmer here -- the book itself, or its delightful main character, a brown-skinned boy with a puckish puff of purple hair who busies himself collecting words. This book packs so much in so little that word lovers will want to read The Word Collector again and again. Author-illustrator Peter H. Reynolds grounds young readers by first introducing the concept of collections, picturing kids collecting bugs and baseball cards. "And Jerome? What did HE collect?" As Reynolds tells us with a concise literary flair, Jerome collects "Short and sweet words. Two-syllable treats. And multi-syllable words that sounded like little songs."

The book brims with treats. When Jerome finds words in a book, the art shows him with an open copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, writing down the word "Emerald." One page notes "words whose sounds were perfectly suited to their meaning," while picturing kids' drawings of "torrential," "bellow," and a smudged-out "smudge." And the pages on which Jerome practices some of his "most powerful" words, such as "I understand" and "I’m sorry," are so touching they send a little shiver up the spine. This book, as playful and quirky as its main character, is a gem.