A reader who is almost 13 recently asked me about the third word in “The Uncooperative Flying Carpet” which is “slanted”. I explained it meant that the rain came down in a slant because of the strong wind, but it started me thinking about extending readers by including words they haven’t come across before and using the context to work out the meaning. I chose to use mostly short and familiar words so that readers aged 8 to 12 would enjoy the story, but I left in a few longer words too, such as “noxious”. This was a deliberate decision because I realised that when I was growing up, my own vocabulary was extended because of the books I read. Like many pre-teen girls, I knew that “Titian” was a word used to describe red hair, because some descriptions of Nancy Drew used that word. I had to wait a bit longer before I realised he was a real person, mind you! So anyway, I hope that some of my readers get to learn some new words or new uses for old words 🙂
