If you’re trying to get your little ones interested in language and learning – I can say it’s a safe bet you’ll have more luck with these wild wacky words than you will with just your average book. This fun, bright, engaging little book has words like “LOOM”, “BAWL”, and “LUMINOUS” and matches every wacky word with bright, fun pictures that will stay in your mind for years to come. This one takes learning from something educational to something purely fun, and will captivate the kiddos!

So, I know this is a children's book BUT CAN THE AUTHOR MAKE ONE FOR ADULTS?! This was so fun and fresh and I even learned some new words!

This is the perfect book to keep a kiddo engaged, while also teaching them that words AREN'T scary and can be really cool! Very educational from learning about onomatopoeias, hyperboles, similies, metaphors and even some facts about animals. The illustrations were bright and engaging and eye-catching. I think if more kids learn that words aren't something to fear, it'll hopefully cultivate more of a love of learning and reading in the future. This book shows that you should express your feelings with words (could be a good opportunity to discuss words are more effective than anything physical when you don't agree with someone?) and gave some examples of more creative words to use when describing how you feel.

One of the BEST features was the glossary at the back!- WHAT?!! All the words learned throughout the book are compiled neatly at the end with their definitions AND type of word (noun, adjective, etc).

An exceptionally amusing and delightful romp of a book through the world of WILD WACKY WORDS!
Highly recommend, very engaging and unique & not run-of-the-mill words. The author set this up for SO many great ways to spin off and incorporate other lessons from it.

Book received for free through NetGalley

I read the kindle pre-released copy of this book so the images were a bit cut up and helter skelter. That said both me and my girls loved it. It was fun to read (loved the phonetic pronunciations) and listen to. My seven year old says she "loves it so much" while my five year old went with "I love the book so much and I’m still practicing with reading but I still love it a lot"

This book had a lot of great words that are uncommon but the structure of the book was quite chaotic. The glossary at the end was appreciated.

Wild Wacky Words by Deborah Anne Zatz. I love this book. I loved learning the meaning of words not always the spelling of words. Through reading you discover many words and improve your vocabulary. As an adult I found this book really interesting and I think a parent or teacher reading this book aloud to children the children would find the book interesting. You could incorporate with a spelling or vocabulary lesson. Read the book you and your children will love it.

I received this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was a fun book! It was a little wordier than I thought it would be (ironic, I know), so geared toward and older kiddo. I liked that the words were sounded out and had good examples of ways to use the words. Some words were in pictures, such as herbivore made out of fruits and veggies. Its a great way to introduce new and big words without intimidating children by hoe long or crazy sounding they are!

This is such a fun book. I heartily endorse anything to do with exploring and learning more about our awesome language in a non-stressful way. Kids ( and adults ) will delight in expanding their vocabulary in a playful manner as they turn from page to page. "Wild Wacky Words" is a celebration of new word finds!

The book invites kids into a word game. It uses colours and images to lock in the meaning of the words so they will not be forgotten. What a great learning tool.... fun ....who knew?

The author includes a phonetic pronunciation guide that will prove very helpful if words are totally foreign to the reader and a dictionary at the end. All-in-all the illustrations are wonderful and this poetic book is a perfect way to take the scariness out of tackling unknown words and will help build confidence that those words can be conquered.

Kids will discover that words are informative and entertaining too. The book encourages wordplay and the love of language. I highly recommend this book and suggest it be included in classrooms and elementary school libraries. The book is truly supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

P.S. Google: Find the longest words in the English dictionary. It's a fun thing to do. Enjoy!


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is chock full of words that the middle elementary school set may not be familiar with yet. The words are featured in a sing songy style with a definition on the immediate page following the use of the word. This immediacy breaks the rhythm of the story. The word choice, while interesting, is a little zany. Why would a kid need to know suffrage, bumfuzzle, and gondola in the same book? I appreciate the reinforcement of English literary devices like onomatopoeia, metaphor, and similes. And the use of scientific terms like volcanology and organism. The topics seemed a bit off beat. Read this book with your kids to expose them to new words. Use again as a resource to practice using a glossary.

This is a great book to help improve the vocabulary of elementary and even middle school students. It helps make learning and words fun!! I really enjoyed the pronunciation guides for each new, tricky word. There were a few that I'm not sure are super useful, like "nacreous" or "niveous". The glossary at the end could even be useful for a quick vocabulary check-in for SAT prep.

Having a 5 year old this book is an amazing asset. Not only are the illustrations amazing, it brings the words that no one can say (thank you for the pronunciation guides) to life. Big words are often avoided with smaller children but I feel like presented the right way it can lead to great vocabulary advancements. This is defiantly a book that will be appearing on our home shelf.

This is a great book that could be really helpful to many kids when learning words, especially larger words and adjectives for common words. I enjoyed the way that the author included pronunciations for each word and the illustrations were beautifully done!

Encourages wordplay and a love of language.

It may not be for everyone, but this does show young people that words can be fun, it gives a few useful definitions (metaphor, onomatopoeia) and introduces random vocabulary that may inspire readers to try using big words themselves.

There's no story, just a rhyming text about not being afraid of Big Words.

With pictures that show children enjoying playing with language, the rhymes include pronunciation and definitions as well as examples. There's even a glossary.

I quite liked this, it won't suit young picture book readers, more suited to KS2 children really, ages 7-11 who will find some of this terminology familiar and who are building vocabularies at school.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

Hmmm... This is quite a clumsy rhyme, intended to introduce the young reader to some peculiar words and in general to get them used to the fact some words can be unusual but still very useful and fun to know about. Better when it is getting us up to speed ready for our first grammar lessons, by telling us about hyperbole, metaphor and simile and so on, it does kind of lose touch with its intentions by yacking on about different words with very little connection, just because it can. Still, they all get definitions and a pronunciation guide, and there's a closing glossary, so nobody should be feeling left behind, but is this really as edifying (to choose one of its own contents) as it wishes? I don't think so. Two and a half stars; it's no Wordy Rappinghood.

Wild Wacky Words is kind of like a fun dictionary for kids. The exact age range isn't stated anywhere in the book. I assume it's somewhere in elementary school. It would be nice to know the age range somewhere either in the copyright page or the back of the book.

I think the pictures are great. They're cute and fun. There's a good selection of words kids may or may not know. The only problem I noticed was that some of the definitions in the text don't really help understand the words. The most glaring of these is "meticulous is precise." Defining words with words of slightly lesser difficulty can be confusing for some. To the author's credit, this word is cleared up in the dictionary at the end.

I liked this book, but would like to know the age range. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this book.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Wild Wacky Words by Deborah Anne Zatz is a wonderful children's picture book about confusing words. The book includes full-color pictures with each word that explains its meaning and allows children to better remember the words. According to the description, "By introducing how words can be combined with colors and images in order to highlight their meanings, words themselves become beautiful landscapes that readers will want to explore."

Overall, Wild Wacky Words is an educational children's picture book with a great purpose. It will teach children new vocabulary words in a fun way. I read a study once that said that children's picture books contain high-level vocabulary that children would not normally come across. I know it seems unbelievable, but it's true, and I'm sure this book contains words that children would not come across in everyday life. I took off 2 stars, because some of the words seemed almost archaic and pointless to learn. I also wish that one page had been devoted to each word instead of having several vocabulary words on each page. If you're intrigued by the description, I recommend that you check out this book, which is available now.

This book is a fun introduction to some types of figurative language and the accompanying illustrations are appealing. However, on the pages where there are no category of words, the arrangement seems random and I lost interest. Toward the end it read a bit like an SAT study guide.

I would have loved this book as a kid! I loved words and would read my children's dictionary because it satisfied me more than the books available for my grade level. I didn't understand why, if I could read the words, I couldn't learn more words to increase my vocabulary and reading level. If I didn't understand a word, I'd look it up without hesitation. Many days, I'd copy words out of the dictionary to get it into my brain. They were a special interest. 🥲

This book is a bit like that. I learned some words I didn't know the meanings of, despite hearing or seeing several of them in my life up to this point.

Some of the rhymes don't add up, but the melody is quickly recovered with the next one. The illustrations are colorful and pleasing to the eye.

Love love love this book for children! What a fun way to introduce new words and help kids feel more confident about them, especially with the pronunciation right there next to it!

This book is such a cute way for kids to learn big words! It shows that they are not scary, and in fact, they can be fun to learn! Each big word is accompanied with a phonetic pronunciation, which is great. There are also really cute illustrations! There were even words I had never heard of before, which was also fun.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ever wondered what an okapi is? What about laconic or niveous?

This wonderfully illustrated book will introduce this language and more in a fun poetic way.

Informative while being entertaining, would definitely be of interest to school aged children to foster a love of language.