Illustrated Word Smart: A Visual Vocabulary Builder (Smart Guides)

Illustrations should be a great help with vocabulary acquisition, in theory. But in practice, unless you limit yourself to nouns, it takes some real inspiration to illustrate abstract words.

There is little inspiration in this book. Check out "assiduous" for an example of the artist's failed attempts to make difficult words more memorable.

I would not recommend this book as a study aid to learn vocabulary words for several reasons. Although the book's front cover suggests that somehow visual cues provided by this book will help you learn vocabulary words such as duplicitous, fastidious, and heinous it did not seem like that when I read through this book. The illustrations all seem to come from the same artist and are not particularly pleasing to the eye, at least not my eye. The basic template for all the words in this book contains an illustration of one or two people. When the conversations will simply say a line that is supposed to remind you of the word (usually doesn't include the word) that is meant to be taught. You cannot look at any illustration alone and relate it to the word that is supposed to be taught. The way the book attempts to teach the words is through pnemonic techniques made up by somehow combine the word and an inkling of the definition. This is a terrible book for people over the age of 12. Just get yourself a regular vocabulary book and avoid the tragic attempted teaching style this book has used. With good enough net surfing you can find the actual helpful stuff this book has, such as crossword puzzles, online somewhere for free.

Yeah, this book mught be useful if you have the vocabulary of a paper cup. I genuinely couldn't believe the words in this thing. Who is this for? Eleven-year olds? Seriously-AVOID.

The book has only about 250 - 300 words (250 are offered as key words which are illustrated and other related words are mentioned in a box underneath the illustration). Words are arranged in 17 sections and each section is followed by several drills where you can test your understanding of the words. At the end of the book are puzzles for more word fun.

This book is the best vocabulary builder I have come across; it is great for the SAT. The Illustrated Word Smart has the added bonus of containg some GRE vocabulary as well. Visual space and creativity made it easy for me to learn 250 words in two weeks. My only problem is that there are not more difficult illustrated vocabulary books after this one.