The Boy Who Loved Words

On Friday, we read the book "The Boy Who Loved Words" by Roni Schotter. It's a story about a boy named Selig who is passionate about words-their sounds (tintinnabulating!), their taste (tantalizing!), and the way they moved his heart. An avid word-hoarder, he delights in discovering new terms, recording them on paper scraps, and stowing them in pockets. Unable to comprehend their son's strange predilection, his practical-minded parents worry about his future, and his classmates cruelly add oddball to his collection. After dreaming about a Yiddish Genie who advises him to embrace his passion and seek his life's purpose, Selig embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Feeling weighted down by his vocabulary slips, he climbs a tree and carefully attaches them to the branches. Fantastically and fittingly, several of them blow into the hands of a poet who is struggling for the right adjectives to finish his verse. Selig realizes that his mission is to bestow his word wealth upon others. He tosses out luscious to accentuate a baker's wares, halts an argument with harmony, and invigorates an elderly man with spry. He grows up to find personal fulfillment and even true love. (http://www.amazon.ca/)

After reading the story together and inspired by the "ransom note" look to the words , I pulled some of the new vocabulary words out of the text and the kids spent time sifting through magazines to reproduce some of the words with different fonts and letters. The effect was quite striking. I also challenged some of the kids to go home, share the words with their parents, and inform the class of the definitions. Thanks to Matia, we learned that voracious means excessively greedy, and luscious means delicious to taste and smell.