The Cat in the Hat Beginner Book Dictionary (I Can Read It All by Myself Beginner Books)

A decades-old dictionary that you can still use today (and know that children will love it) is an amazing testament to the genius of the Seuss stable. The roughly 12-per-page colored drawings are dated, of course--the humans far more than the animals, funnily enough--but they've aged in a way that adds to their charm rather than detracting from it. (Phonograph may take some explaining; ditto typewriter, which we recently heard described as "like a computer, only with paper instead of a screen.") The 1,350 words are well balanced between the obvious stuff--common nouns and verbs--and more abstract language, from about to yet. Each word is accompanied by a drawing and an illustrative sentence. Along the way, naturally, we meet a wacky menagerie of humans and animals: "Aaron the alligator making more machines," "Aunt Ada standing on her head," etc. (Ages 4 to 8) --Richard Farr