Ever since Mary Poppins and ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocius,’ I have been a fan of long words.
The word floccinaucinihilipilification caught my attention when it did the rounds on Whats-app last year, popularized by a sesquipedalian Indian politician/author whose winding sentences are a wonder to listen to. I learned to correctly pronounce the word and was pretty impressed with myself!
Needless to say I was delighted when I found both floccinaucinihilipilification and sesquipedalian in Lauren Child’s Hubert Horatio – How to Raise Your Grown-ups. If you delve into this book you’ll find many more interesting things such as how to decipher whether a cousin is a second cousin or first cousin once removed.
Up until now we knew Lauren Child as the creator of the adorable Charlie & Lola series, which we’ve enjoyed both in picture books and on screen. I’m so excited to have come across Child’s junior fiction novels Hubert Horatio – How to Raise your Grown-ups‘ and ‘Clarice Bean – Utterly Me.’
Hubert Horatio is a millionaire genius child surrounded by irresponsible adults. He steps up to the challenge of figuring things out when mysterious happenings occur. Clarice Bean has hilarious observations of the world around her and looks up to the hero of her favourite book. Clarice has a book project coming up, she wants to win the class prize, but is utterly distracted.
Both books are suitable for years 7 up, the text is large with varied font and well spaced, interspersed with pauses between chapters, letters, lists and illustrations.
