Happy New Year! If you are a children’s author, or you aspire to becoming one, your New Year is filled with resolutions. For authors, those resolutions include many things associated with writing.

Please join me in exploring seven ways that a children’s writer can invest in her career. It will take us seven weeks to cover all of the topics. Today, we are talking about dictionaries.

What types of dictionaries are on an author’s bookshelf?

A children’s author has multiple dictionaries on her bookshelf. They will include a beginning reader dictionary, an elementary dictionary, and a dictionary for adults. 

For example, if an author is writing about a little girl being a child of the King, a princess, she would want to look at the wording in a children’s dictionary for ideas. Child-friendly wording is important for kids to understand the Biblical ideas presented.

The easy-to-understand wording helps parents as well. Perhaps they are searching for the right words to use in explaining something to the child. Perhaps they are learning the precepts of the Bible for themselves.

Does an author need more than one children’s dictionary at a certain level?

I am always on the lookout for new dictionaries to add to my bookshelf. Sometimes a different approach in a new dictionary’s wording can help me in getting a difficult idea across. Sometimes looking at the pictures gives me an idea of what concepts might be tricky for little ones.

What about your writer’s bookshelf? What kinds of dictionaries do you have? Please share with us!

Join me next week to explore some specialty dictionaries for children’s authors.

Blessings,

Carol