Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a 5th grade teacher I was forced to buy the Scholastic Children's Dictionary last year because I didn't have much money to spend and it was affordable. After having spent a frustrating year trying to get some use out of this dictionary, I'm now purchasing another dictionary. Why? First, I was lucky enough to have more money available. As many teachers can attest, this is a rare occurrence. Second, the Scholastic Children's Dictionary just doesn't have enough words in it to be useful to my students. Time and time again, words that my students needed to look up just weren't in this dictionary. It's attractive enough; it has plenty of pictures; it includes a few word histories (I'd like more); and it has most of the other things you'd expect in a dictionary. The problem is that it doesn't include enough words for children at my grade level. I think it would be an adequate dictionary for 3rd grade students, but I wouldn't suggest it above that grade level. Not wanting to make another mistake, I spent a considerable amount of time researching which dictionary to buy. I looked at over 20 dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster Children's Dictionary, MacMillan Dictionary for Students, American Heritage Student Dictionary, and several others. I finally settled on Thorndyke & Barnhart's Junior Dictionary. I also liked their intermediate dictionary, but it cost considerably more and it didn't include much additional information. What I liked best about the Thorndyke & Barnhart's Junior Dictionary was that it includes many more words than the Scholastic Children's Dictionary (almost double). I typed up a list of over 200 words I couldn't find in the Scholastic Children's Dictionary and used this list when comparing the other dictionaries. Not only did the Thorndyke & Barnhart's Junior Dictionary have more of the words than any of the other dictionaries I looked at, its definitions were more appropriate, I thought, for 5th grade students than the others. The other dictionaries either dumbed-down the definitions to the point of loosing meaning or left some definitions so complex that students of this age group couldn't understand them. The Thorndyke & Barnhart's Junior Dictionary had the best balance. The choice was a surprisingly simple after I started really looking at the dictionaries and comparing them.