A worm who lives on words, Wally finds himself starved for inspiration . . . until the day he slithers into a magical book: the dictionary. From this moment, he embarks upon a logomaniacal odyssey of epic proportions, munching on the likes of “eft” and “escalator,” “ptarmigan” and “sesquipedalian.” From Wally the Wordworm’s first publication in 1964, children and adults alike have been delighted by Wally’s wriggling through rhymes and words of increasing difficulty and complexity, his acrobatics whimsically illustrated by The New Yorker cartoonist Arnold Roth.

Genuinely fun to read aloud, and complete with an afterword by Clifton Fadiman’s daughter, Anne Fadiman, Wally the Wordworm instills in young readers a love of words and language and an early appreciation for their vast possibilities.