The Word Collector

"Simplest words are the most powerful."

Jerome is a little boy who loves to collect words from what he hears, reads, or sees. He is a logophile! Usually, children of his age collect stones, stamps, coins, bugs, artwork, comic books, or baseball cards.

Title: The Word Collector

Author/ Illustration: Peter Hamilton Reynolds

Publisher: Scholastic  

To learn more about this wonderful author and illustrator, please visit his website here.

Jerome is fascinated by words. He copies down his favorite words and saves them in scrapbooks. He collects those words which "catch his attention" or "jump at him". He has a huge pile of scrapbooks with all his special words organized into different categories.

One day, he was transporting his scrapbook collection when he slipped and all his scrapbooks flew into the air. All the words he had saved in the scrapbooks scattered around him and they all got mixed up. "Big" and "Little" words were now together and "Sad" words were with "Dreamy" words - words he had not imagined side by side were now together!

This incident encouraged Jerome to share his collection in the form of poems and songs. He also decided to share his word collection with other kids in the valley by emptying it into the wind. This made Jerome indescribably happy!

The illustrations in this book are very colorful and go well with the flow of the story. The words Jerome collects are depicted via rectangular pieces of paper. The text is easy to read and very encouraging. This is a very pleasant read that would make kids realize the power of words. Collecting words could also be carried out as a classroom or home activity which would help build the vocabulary of children.

The book ends with a very inspiring message to all of us-

"Reach for your own words.

Tell the world who you are.

And how you will make it better."

Indeed, this book gives us a very valuable message that words are magical tools used to reveal what we think, feel, or dream about!

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