a dictionary

Can you remember ever being excited about a dictionary? I can't. I decided my 7 yr old needed one when he started to ask me things like "what's 'brutal' mean?". I remember being told "go look it up" and wanted to say the same - but realized that wasn't a reasonable option. An adult dictionary seems to require an adult vocabulary to understand the definitions. Little kid dictionaries don't have words like brutal in them. I went on-line to Amazon, read a few reviews and placed my order for a kid dictionary (along with some other reading books like "George Washington" "Spiderman" various Ricky Ricotta and his giant robot books (a mouse and his robot!) and one about the race to the moon. Oh yeah - a cooking book (or 2) for me. I later informed my son. Boy was he excited! Boy was I surprised. He started mentally listing words he wanted to look up - including "atlas" and "sex". We also wanted to look up "elipad" (if I am remembering correct spelling - quite possibly not - it wasn't in our grown up dictionary and refers to kinds of snakes). Turns out the sex definition he was after was the one regarding gender. The sex of the snake for example. He was also excited to find (multiple) definitions for "a". It WAS in the dictionary! Now he is back to lobbying for a desk (needs a place to keep the dictionary you know!).