Colette Hiller’s Colossal Words for Kids: 75 Tremendous Words: Neatly Defined to Stick in the Mind (Bookshop|Amazon) uses clever rhymes to help children learn big, fun-to-say words like magnanimous, discombobulated, and acquiesce. This colorful book features playful illustrations by Tor Freeman. By the way, author Colette Hiller has had a long career on stage and screen, including playing Corporal Ferro in the movie Aliens. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Colossal Words”
I have a book I want to recommend. It’s called Colossal Words for Kids, 75 Tremendous Words Neatly Defined to Stick in the Mind. It’s by Colette Hiller, and she uses charming little poems to define each of these 75 big words.
For example, for the word colossal, the poem is, if something is huge, truly enormous, a mountain perhaps, or a brontosaurus, a royal palace, or a giant fossil, all these things could be called colossal. When something’s so big, you stand back and say, whoa, the word colossal is handy to know.
And she does this for words like magnanimous and discombobulated and acquiesce. And it’s a beautiful book, too. It’s playful. It’s colorful. It’s illustrated by Tor Freeman.
I should add, too, that Colette Hiller worked many years as an actor performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, and she’s worked as a producer for the BBC. And for all you movie buffs out there, she also played Corporal Farrow in Aliens.
Oh, fantastic. And because she’s got all this theatrical experience, she probably has good rhythm for writing poetry.
She sure does.
So that book, again, is Colossal Words for Kids, 75 Tremendous Words, neatly defined to stick in the mind by Colette Hiller. We’ll link to that from our website at waywordradio.org.
