7. Should we start a home reference library?

The basic home reference library should include a children's dictionary, an atlas, an almanac, and at least a good single-volume encyclopedia with an index. A set of ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITTANICAS is preferable, but they can cost as much as a used car.

Sooner or later your kid is going to insist on cutting out pictures of African elephants, and you'll wish you had those NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICS or a good child's magazine, such as KIDS DISCOVER (science), COBBLESTONE (history), or FACES (people of the world). Many of these have invaluable year-end indexes.

If you own a computer with CD-ROM capability, CD-ROM encyclopedias (many parents praise ), dictionaries, atlases, and other reference materials may also be cheaper, more easily updated, more multifaceted and more visually interesting than some books.

For example, Microsoft's , which costs about $50, includes a dictionary, a thesaurus, a book of quotations, an encyclopedia, an atlas, a chronology, and an almanac. Using the software program , a second or third grader can click on highlighted words in the text and say, "habitat" to get a definition. He can also access dramatic video footage of a cheetah running full speed.

But despite all the bells and whistles, newfangled software can't really compete with the feeling of a warm, heavy book in your lap. As a child, I spent many rainy afternoons browsing through the gray, weighty prose of my family's 1955 ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITTANICA, reading about such things as the Ming Dynasty. For my money, it's best when home libraries combine classic tools (such as books) with contemporary technology.



Judith Hooper is a freelance writer and homework hostess who lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.