EDUCATION : Child’s Home Reference Library a Wise Investment

One of the best investments you can make to help your child excel in school is to build a current and thorough reference library at home.

But spending hundreds of dollars on a set of encyclopedias is not necessary. In fact, many librarians advise spending the money on a set of more versatile books instead.

A thorough and accurate dictionary is the most important reference book your child can possibly have while in school, and two publishers are favored by teachers and librarians.

“Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary” offers almost 160,000 words with 200,000 definitions. A new feature in this edition is that the entries are dated--that is, your student can find the age of a word and when it was first used.

Webster’s costs $17.95 in hardcover.

Also popular with teachers and students is the “American Heritage Second College Edition Dictionary,” which also costs $17.95 in hardcover. It contains 100,000 definitions, but its special feature is the 3,000 photographs and illustrations.

A paperback American Heritage dictionary costs just $4.95, but is leaner, with 60,000 definitions and 400 photos.

Next to a good dictionary, a thesaurus is most important because it helps writers avoid tiresome overuse of certain words by suggesting appropriate synonyms.

According to many teachers and librarians, the name Roget is itself a synonym for “thesaurus,” because “Roget’s International Thesaurus” is the most definitive. This single volume contains 256,000 words and phrases and their synonyms, in alphabetical order. That’s about 100,000 words and phrases more than other thesauruses have.

In hardcover, the fourth edition of Roget’s costs $15.95; the paperback is $10.95.

If your student is in junior or senior high school, he or she is probably studying a foreign language. A dictionary for that language is indispensable.

The Cassell’s series of language dictionaries is favored by many teachers. Cassell’s Spanish-English, French-English and German-English dictionaries each sell for $21.95 in hardback.

They all include words most used in modern speech and literature, as well as idioms and newly accepted words. They also contain pronunciation guides and verb conjugation tables.

Smaller editions are $10.95 each, and will fit easily into your child’s backpack.

The hottest new one-volume desk encyclopedia is the “Random House Encyclopedia.” Its 2,912 pages include 13,500 illustrations and a 132-page full-color atlas.

The encyclopedia is divided into sections such as “The Universe,” “Life on Earth,” “History and Culture,” and “Man and Science.” Each of these contains dozens of subtopics.

Random House prices its encyclopedia at $129.95, but at least one local bookstore chain is now selling it for about $65.

The “1991 World Almanac and Book of Facts” has just hit the bookstores. This annual favorite comes in paperback and costs $6.95.

The almanac is not only useful for finding statistics for reports and speeches, but is also intriguing because of its variety of topics. Headings include “All-Time Top 50 Movie Grosses,” “Tips for Fuel-Efficient Driving,” and “Major Decisions of the Supreme Court.”

All maps and flags of the world are new to this edition, and there are about 1 million up-to-date facts in all.

Recently I wrote about the declining fitness of area teen-agers and suggested that you help your child exercise more. Now you can buy a book that tells how to do just that.

“Teenage Fitness,” by Bonnie Prudden, sells for about $10 in paperback and outlines a complete exercise program for your teen-ager.

The book includes tests to spot the student’s physical strengths and weaknesses, and offers dozens of exercises that do not require special clothing or equipment. It also advises students on how to make the most of his or her gym facilities at school.

A handbook of etiquette may at first seem out of place in a student’s reference library. But good manners and social poise are skills as necessary for success in life as reading and writing.

Emily Post’s “Etiquette,” fourteenth edition, is probably the best up-to-date guide to modern manners for teens and adults. Post will help your child master the basic rules of social interaction, including table manners, making good conversation, writing business letters, and other common courtesies.

It is a valuable and timeless book, available in hardcover for $25.95.

Mary Yarber teaches English and journalism at Santa Monica High School and writes a weekly education column for The Times. From time to time, she will use the column to answer questions from readers. Questions may be submitted to her in care of The Times Westside section, 1717 4th St., Suite 200, Santa Monica, 90401.