Authors who experiment with words, structure, and language delight readers with the power of words.

The characters that encounter librarians or teachers who promote the love of learning act as mirrors (hopefully!) for readers to relate their own special school experiences. Matilda, by Roald Dahl, highlights Matilda, whose life-changing teacher, Ms. Honey, is the first adult to see her potential. Likewise, in Property of a Rebel Librarian by Allison Varnes, June is an older student, but just as impacted by her relationship with Ms. Bradshaw, the school librarian. 

Other books integrate wordplay into the plot of the story. In The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln, the names of the characters are rooted in this humor. The characters’ names are chosen for them at birth from a random page in the dictionary which is why Shenanigan swift, the main character, is up to no good. Another family centered story using language to build the plot is The Lost Language by Claudia Mills. The book itself is fiction-in-verse filled with figurative language, as well as the plotline of two girls learning an ancestral language.

These books are delightful shared reading experiences that provide plenty of opportunities to go down the rabbit hole of words along with a dictionary, a thesaurus, or a teacher.