W Is For Webster
Noah Webster and his American Dictionary
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From an early age, Noah Webster was an odd fellow who liked to talk big and loved learning. He thought America needed its own national language and knew he was just the man to create it. He started with a speller, including everyday words like "scab," "grub," and "mop," and moved on to create a small dictionary. He rode around on a horse, selling his books by hand. Then Noah decided to compile a complete and comprehensive dictionary of American English. He thought the book would take him five years to finish. It took twenty, but his dictionary today is the second-most printed book in the English language.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a visually fantastical portrait of Noah Webster, Fern and Kulikov present him as an eccentric intellectual with flaming red hair and a tendency to irritate others with his "know-it-all ways." In the wake of the Revolutionary War, Webster set out to "give America its own language," creating a bestselling "speller" book before writing the dictionary for which he is best known. Kulikov's florid paintings toy with dimension and size in one scene, Webster sits atop a small planet, la Saint-Exup ry's Little Prince, while an open dictionary helps form an enormous W in a triumphal closing image. Ages 4 8.
