Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z is a collection of poems organized from from A ("Acceptance") to Z ("Zest"). Using a wide variety of poetic forms, each poem explores a powerful and impactful big idea from peace, kindness, and empathy to compassion, belonging, and service. Each poem includes a thoughtful quote, the authors thoughts, and a 'try it' call to action offering a tangible action step.

**NCTE 2021 Notable Book in Poetry ( )

Beginning with the word “acceptance” and moving through the alphabet to “zest”, the authors explain that they wanted to use their voices to help make the world a better place, and share ideas for working toward change.

Each word gets at least a double-page spread, accompanied by an original poem, apt quotes, thoughts about the words and what they means to the authors, and suggestions for how to share the sentiment expressed by the word. For example, for “compassion,” the author suggests:

“Look around you. Who in your life is struggling? Try assisting that person with something you know how to help with. . . .”

For word “forgiveness,” the authors talk about not just forgiving others, but the important idea of forgiving yourself. Their suggestion is “If you feel the need to be forgiven, write a letter of forgiveness to yourself for what you’ve done and mail it to your own address.”

Other words expressing important concepts include empathy, gratitude, hope, justice, kindness, love, respect, team, and voice.

After the last word, the authors dedicate a page to “The Etymology of Progress,” writing:

“After gathering these words,
We discover
Our dictionary is endless!
What makes the world
A zinger
Is remembering
We’re all in this…
Together”

Illustrator Mehrdokht Amini uses mixed media, collage, and humor to convey the concepts discussed.

Evaluation: I remember studying Benjamin Franklin’s “Autobiography” for precepts on how one ought to behave and navigate through the world. This book offers a much more other-directed approach, and includes many noteworthy quotations and inspiring ideas. ( )

Great gift book for ages 8-18! It might also be fine for college students/young adults and also older adults. When I borrowed this book from the library in late February or early March (it’s the last checked out library book I’m getting to these many months later) I was expecting a picture book for preschoolers or early elementary school students. This book is much more advanced than that. I know that this is a children’s book but my opinion is that to get the full value of it, it’s best for older children, young adults, and also adults.

I love the format. It’s wonderfully illustrated with mostly full page illustrations with the text incorporated into the pictures. The art is glorious, fun, beautiful, and varied. Each letter has one to four words and for each word there is a poem (and the poem’s form is included, and I learned a LOT) and a quote (many are great) and a true life very short story about an event in their life or musings about something of importance to one of the authors, with a “Try it!” suggestion inspired by the biographical account.

I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy or feel interested in this book’s contents but I did. When I was a kid/teen I would have loved this book. I avoided reading it and considered putting it with my library materials ready to return when the pandemic rules permit. I’m glad that I decided to read it.

The word open for the letter O is why this book is on my vegan shelf. I am thrilled. (This was a 5 star book for me before I got to the letter O.)

Unlike virtually all other “alphabet books” the X word was not a cheat, though not as well used/defined as I would have liked.

In the back of the book is an authors’ note, a list of the books and poems and speech referenced in the book, and a list of additional recommended books, a list of poetry resources, an index of poetic forms (47 of them!!! I wish I’d read that section first!), and gratitude lists that are the acknowledgments pages, and bios and photos of the two authors and the illustrator. Really there are two photos of the three book creators. Cute illustration at the end with them appearing in it!

The words: Acceptance, Ally, Belonging, Compassion, Courage, Create, Dialogue, Diversity, Dream, Empathy, Equality, Exercise, Experiment, Forgiveness, Freedom, Fuel, Gratitude, (Epitaph for) Hate, Hope, Humility, Intention, Justice, Kindness, Laughter, Listen, Love, Mindfulness, Nature, Netiquette, Open, Pause, Peace, Question, Reach, Release, Respect, Service, Shero, Team, Tenacity, Upstander, Voice, Vulnerable, (Bear) Witness, Wonder, Xenial, Yes, Zest

I’d be delighted to see this book as part of every family’s book collection, in every library, in every school/classroom, and in every psych treatment center (children, teens, adults,) youth centers, etc. It’s a great book for independent readers and also perfect for sharing and discussing. Highly recommended! ( )

This is not only a wonderful book of poetry, but a teaching tool (it has lots of examples of different forms of poetry explained), self reflection possibilities and language arts suggestions. ( )