Cryptomania!: Teleporting into Greek and Latin With the Cryptokids

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Summary: Cryptomania - Fun and Fascination with Words
Review: I love giving this book to grandchildren and friends for birthdays, holidays and visits. I find new info every time I open it. Cryptomania is complex and fascinating. We come back to it often to find and understand the origin of words. Greek and Latin languages help the book's characters solve a homeWORD assignment using commonly available supplies (a big cardboard box), modern tools (a computer) and vivid imaginations (teleporting to different times) to discover the world of words. The illustrations and glosseries are terrific. I wish I'd learned word-meaning and word-making this way.

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Summary: A feast for the brain and eye!
Review: Suddenly, words I have known and used all my life make sense. I can pick them apart, scrutinize those parts, and understand exactly why the word means what it means. And I now also have a method to dissect unfamiliar words and figure out what they mean. Then, I can take some word parts, put them together, and come up with a brand new word of my own. All thanks to Cryptomania!

I never had the opportunity to study Greek and Latin in school. Now, thanks to this book, I've had my own course in the Greek and Latin roots of English--and I've been entertained while doing so. Each page is an adventure in itself, and young readers will find endless sights to fascinate and intrigue, all while learning. The illustrations are a perfect match for the tale, changing style as the characters travel through time and space. This book is certain to open young eyes and minds to the wonders of language. If these readers eventually participate in "Jeopardy" or "Millionaire", the knowledge they acquire from Cryptomania! might earn them a million dollars. For certain it will help them score higher on their SATs. Not bad results from one stunning nonfiction picture book!

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Summary: A great book!
Review: This is an amazing book filled with the zany adventures of the CryptoKids, with their buddy Alphy, a microcyanasaurus. With knowledge of Greek and Latin roots increasingly part of state English and Language Arts standards, this book gives teachers a way to have fun with students, who will love the Teleporter destination and learn valuable decoding skills. Parents and grandparents will love it, too. It's a book for students of all ages to read, study, and pore over. Kim Doner's illustrations are beautiful, creative, and varied.