I use the words that need to be used. And sometimes I have to fight for them. I did a series of books about a pig butler called Piggins. In the first book, he finds that the diamond lavaliere is missing. And my editor said, “No kid will know what ‘lavaliere’ is.”
I said, “then they’ll learn it.”
And you know what happened? Every school that I went to that had been reading Piggins, the kids’ favorite word was “lavaliere.” So, I think that you use the words that need to be used. If they’re big and the kids don’t understand them, they’ll either get it in context, or they’ll ask someone, or they’ll look it up.
Kids who never hear good words, who are never get stretched by them, are not going to be word lovers. So, at least in our books, let’s give them great words.
