Very clever book, that utilises the scenery of a playing area and the rest of a park setting to show words, literally in their natural environment. It's about the power of words to do damage, but also to heal, connect people, and to get people to a state of flying, or simple truth, or being loved. Yeah, it's not the easiest to describe, but there are many positive words to be said about this. It's very artfully done, the way there's a character formed from the letters in the word 'WORD', the railings display 'SAFE' if you look closely, and the flowers are happy enough with just half their leaves so as to form 'OK'. I mean it's incredibly distracting from the main thrust of the text, but it's very artfully done. Here words are all around us, and help us with their friendship and strength, so we should speak them out and deliver our message to the world. Or to the rest of the park, at least.

The central theme is that words are unique, just like people. I thought it was important that this book touched on how words can have negative effects. I was impressed with how the author brought up that negative experiences with words can make someone not want to speak. This isn't a topic that kids generally get to explore or see in media. I would recommend this book for parents who want to introduce very high-level communication and linguistics topics to their child.

Words is such a lovely book for younger readers. Not only is it fun, engaging, and pleasant to read but it also contains important messages, especially for younger children to learn.

It is a message about the important of kindness and being gentle with your words, it is a lesson about how words can be painful and used for bad but also the old adage of how words are just words and even if they hurt, you can heal from them too.

The illustrations are wonderful and really keep the readers attention. The vibrant colours really pop and the creative and clever designs of the words come to life as people is a delight and something that will keep younger readers entertained for far longer than it takes to read each page.

Only slight critisism is I think the text could be a bit bolder! No need to make it bigger it was just a bit thin on the page. Other than that it's a beautiful book! Great message and we loved reading it together :)

As a former preschool teacher this story just melted me. It was absolutely marvelous and should be on the shelves of every preschool class and young kid.

I love the idea of this book, but it falls short of the expectation. The diversity of the children pictured throughout the book is amazing. However, a few of my problems with it are:
The “hidden” or “person” words are a cool idea and a fun concept, but they are sometimes very difficult to decipher. The title on the cover is really easy to miss and there is a word-character on page 12 that I still have no idea what it is supposed to say.
There is a line towards the beginning that says “Each one [word] says something no other word can,” but that completely ignores synonyms and isn’t really true. I get what they were going for, but it doesn’t really work.
On page 8 there is talk about how a female’s toot causes embarrassment - can we please just accept that everyone experiences flatulence because it is a normal bodily function?
Page 13 would make sense with an example, but by itself is a bit confusing or lacking.
Some words do actually hurt, and aren’t loving, no matter how presented or by whom, and to deny that is alienating and dismissive, especially to children.

The author of Words has written a children's picture book to help children form a deeper bond and more meaningful connection with the written and spoken language, although its level of sophistication might not be as well received or understood by all readers as the intention for creating it. The pages are filled with illustrations of children joining together in unity and support of each other on their combined level to heighten levels of literacy and a deeper appreciation of words.

What a cute way to not only show different words that you can find with your kiddo, but also a great way to show the power of words.

I enjoyed this book about the importance of words. I found the messaging clear to follow, and I know my children would feel the same way! I loved that the words were illustrated as "people" and felt my children would enjoy figuring out the letters during read-aloud time. I appreciated how the author addressed being scared, learning, and growing!

I thought it was much too busy. I also didn't like the bad-word-bees, as we tend to spend a lot of time teaching about the benefits of pollinators. The other thing I really had an issue with was that it said the same word that hurts is a word that heals, and I think that's a really unfortunate sentiment to teach to children. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for letting me read!

The overall premise here is charming, but I think the letter formation of the personified words should have been formed more precisely in the interest of clarity for new readers. I also think a mention of how hurtful certain words can be may be relevant.

How fun! This is a really clever book, and it's almost like a where's waldo of words. There's the actual story (which goes into things like synonyms and antonyms) , but then there's the words mixed and mingled within the art and it's like a scavenger hunt to find them all. Some images took me a second to figure out what word they were creating, but I honestly think that adds to the game. This will be incredibly fun to read with kids and see what they can find on their own.

"Words" is a thoughtful children's book that teaches kids the importance of using their words. I do think it encourages children that they are okay to use their words however they want without a filter which I don't agree with. I think some of the messages weren't conveyed correctly. It has a artwork of children fighting and later statements of giving as many chances as it takes. While I do think we need to encourage kids to forgive, we also need to encourage boundaries and if there is another child that is constantly hurting them with words- maybe they need to separate form that child. I think we need to encourage our kids to be cautious with our words. We want to use our words to be a light in this world and the kind of words we use matters.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was a little confused on the point of this book. Was the message to talk about feelings? Was it about discovering feelings? Was it to overcome shyness? Was it about public speaking? Maybe it was all of these things combined.
Although I may have missed the intended message of this book, the illustrations were unique. I found myself entertained with the scavenger hunt of finding all the words on each page. There were a few words I had a hard time finding out what they were. Overall, a good book I would revisit.

Oooh I really liked this! I liked they the author really brought the words to life (literally!). Such a fun concept and so beautifully illustrated!

This book has SUCH cute and intentional illustrations. This story would be a great SEL read for littles to help them visualize what their words would look like - nice or... not so nice. Some words, like "safe" and "love", are illustrated as bodies or parts of the environment. This could be super fun during a classroom read-aloud for students to notice more and more words on the page.

However, I definitely struggled to identify the overall theme of the story. I think a bit more of a focus on one idea, like visualizing your words or taking accountability for your words would make the book more cohesive and applicable to a kid's real-life.

Theoretically this book had a good idea at its core and there was quite a bit of serious attention to detail, but it still fell a bit short for me. I'll start by talking about the illustrations. It's clear that the illustrator has an eye for detail and has a lot of creativity. Making each word's "body" spell the actual word was really smart and highly unique! However, the way some of the words were illustrated created some confusion. I found myself sitting here reading this book and thinking, Am I stupid or is this not a complete word?, and then spending extra time confirming that it was, in fact, an actual word. In short, the words as people should be very clear and there should be little to no confusion, especially for a children's book.
As for the writing, it felt a little disconnected. I just don't get what this book is trying to get at. It almost seemed like it was encouraging young readers to overcome fear of speaking, but it wasn't totally clear. Additionally, there weren't really any connectors or transitions between different ideas, which is why I said this book lacks cohesion.
All in all, I think that this book's focus needs to be a bit more specific and conveyed well to the reader.

We always take for granted the power of words and this little book reminded me of that, definitely a wonderful book to read to the kids at home and I will definitely read it to my little nephew. The pictures were beautiful, and the words written in different ways were even more so.

Lovely illustrations. Great book to help teach the power of words and how we need to pick the right ones sometimes.

First things first I'd like to thank the author and NetGalley for lending me this ARC, however all the opinions here are my own.
Words is a children book explaining what words are and their use, explained in a funny and whimsical way, pretty smart way of writing words as pictures, I enjoyed it.
I tend to read children's books when I need to replenish my will to live and when I need recs for the young ones in my life, and I know of certain little boy who finds reading ( and school! ) awful who I believe would find this entertaining, so hopefully there are other ones out there in the same spot who might benefit from it as well!