Gather your construction tools--it's time to build sentences! As players spin and move their pawns around the white track, they use who, what, where, and when phrases to build grammatically-correct sentences. Sentences may be silly or serious. The emphasis in on identifying singular and plural subjects, using verbs that agree, and keeping the same tense--past, present, or future--throughout a sentence. The first player to complete five sentences is...

Wolf considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy and reflection as we become increasingly dependent upon digital technologies. A decade ago, Wolf's Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Now that we are completely immersed in the internet and digital devices, our ways of processing language have altered dramatically....

Successful word-coinages-those that stay in currency for a good long time-tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted. Engaging, illuminating, and authoritative, Ralph Keyes's The Hidden History of Coined Words explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems. He also finds some fascinating patterns, such as that successful neologisms...