Description:
Nothing has been lost in this electronic translation of the popular paper version of the American Heritage Children's Dictionary. In fact, this CD-ROM only builds on its success by adding animations, interactive games, voice-over pronunciations of nearly 13,000 words, and more areas to explore than before. The dictionary is broken into several main parts: a Word Finder, which acts as the main dictionary; three games (Hangman, Spelling Bee, and Charades); and an A to Z section, which shows a colorful collage of select words beginning with whatever letter of the alphabet you clicked on. The A to Z section is perhaps the most delightful area of the program. Within each scene, you can click on any image, and it will pronounce the word and show an animation of that word. P unveils, among other things, a bamboo-eating panda bear, a package being unwrapped, two ballrooms dancers demonstrating the word partner, and a king and queen appearing on the balcony of a palace to wave to their cheering subjects. The Word Finder, though it seems overly simple at first use, can actually get you lost in its depths. Once you find the word you're looking for--or use the handy Word of the Day feature, which shows a definition at random--it will pronounce the word, display the syllables, and show past and present forms of the word if they exist, along with an easy-to-understand, kid-friendly definition. It also has two other features that pop up intermittently: the Word Detective and the Word Wheel. Word Detective displays synonyms, word history, homophones, language notes, a word builder, and more. The World Wheel will show you similar words you might be interested in. When you look up the word horse, it will bring up words within the horse family: burro, donkey, mustang, nag, or palomino, for example, which you can click on for definitions, repeating the cycle. We only had a few small gripes with this program. The first is that the interface is far from intuitive. We recommend parents spend some time with kids at first to get them accustomed to finding what they need. Secondly, the program doesn't expand to a full-screen mode. Most folks probably won't be bothered by this, but if your monitor is larger, background applications can be distracting, especially to younger kids. However, this children's dictionary is nothing short of charming. Kids will like it because it makes exploring English language and words fun and painless, and parents will like it because it expands kid's vocabulary and builds spelling skills. (Ages 7 to 12) --Ara Jane Olufson
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