According to an article published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, adults in the United States have a working vocabulary of more than 42,000 words. [Impressive until you realize the Oxford English Dictionary holds the definitions for 171,476 word, not counting 47,156 obsolete words. Gadzooks!] That represents words these adults have heard and stored somewhere in the nooks and crannies of their craniums, and are able to recognize and understand the meaning of the word. Working vocabulary, words that get daily use, tends to be a great deal smaller, 5,000 to 10,000 words, depending on your socio-economic and educational levels.
Language acquisition begins before the ink is dry on a baby’s birth certificate, and by the time a toddler is ready for pull-ups they own a “listening” vocabulary of several hundred words. Children in the prime picture book audience age of three to five years are acquiring both receptive (words they understand) and expressive vocabulary (words they can use to communicate) at a rapid clip, so picture books are the perfect vehicle for delivering rich language.
The more words a child hears in “active” language (hearing people around them speaking to each other and to the child, as opposed to “passive” language on television) the more easily they will learn to read. More words mean a child is better able to interact and learn from the world around them. More Words = Reading Success.
It’s tempting for those of us who are in love with children’s literature and early childhood education to put our faith in our ability to expand children’s vocabulary by reading rattling-good picture books aloud to them. As useful as that is, the good news is that a child will acquire the vocabulary skills needed to make learning to read easier, even if their parents are illiterate, as long as they are growing up in a “language rich” environment where grown-ups talk and sing to them.
As writers, choosing Just The Right Word adds value to the story. The vocabulary you use helps differentiate one character from another, and gives clues to the setting even before the illustrator gets his or her mitts on it.
Why not choose the RICHEST, JUICIEST, most DELECTABLE words we can when writing for children? We’ve got 171,476 + words available from all corners of our delicious, polyglot, mongrel language to play with!
Rich language is a gift to the grown-up reading the book aloud, or to the older child reading-aloud-in-their-head. The culinary arts have a technical term for the texture of foods and beverages: “mouthfeel”. Words can also have mouthfeel. It is a delight to read William Steig or Rosemary Wells aloud. Consider this passage from The Amazing Bone by Steig
It was a brilliant day, and instead of going straight home from school, Pearl dawdled. She watched the grownups in town at their grownup work, things she might someday be doing.
She saw the street cleaners sweeping the streets and she looked in at the bakery on Parsnip Lane and saw the bakers taking hot loaves of pumpernickel out of the oven and powdering crullers with sugar dust.
On Cobble Road she stopped at Maltby’s barn and stood gawking as the old gaffers pitched their ringing horseshoes and spat tobacco juice.
“Dawdled”, “Parsnip”, “Pumpernickel”, “Crullers”, “Cobble”, “Gawking”, “Gaffers” strong, specific words that use parts of your lips and tongue that seldom get a workout. These are the kind of words that wake up jaded grown-up ears. Imagine how interesting they are to the ears of a four-year-old.
Another “rich language” book is Felix Feels Better by Rosemary Wells. [I’ll wait right here while you run to the library or local independent bookstore for a copy. Okay, got one? Go ahead and read it.]
Hooray for Rosemary! I love that she repeats “Felix” and “Felix’s mama” on almost every page, and juicy words like “peaky”, “perky”, “prunes”, “toasty” and “boost” (not to mention the oh-so-satisfying “moonbeam” and “buttered toast”). The book weighs in at a mere 264 words, (28 of which are the word “Felix”) but what a vocabulary wallop it packs!
For the sake of our stories, for love of the grown-ups who will read them aloud OVER and OVER, and for love of the children who will absorb them and use them as goggles to view the world, let’s make every word count.