I bought this dictionary for my 8 year old grandson who has become very fascinated by words. As soon as it arrived both him and I were drawn to it's very engaging style with lots of bright informative pictures and easy layout with the alphabet down the side of every page etc. It's attractive style did make it hard to put down. I liked the fact that it was hard back as I thought it would probably see a lot of 'action' and at £12.99, I thought it was good value for money. Unfortunately though, within minutes, he was suggesting words he wanted to look up that weren't listed in the dictionary! A bit disappointing - e.g.oesophagus that he had recently learnt and wanted to check out the spelling.. Perhaps with this in mind I would suggest a slightly younger age range; although he's bright he's not that untypical for an 8 year old. Fortunately I had bought 2 dictionaries and couldn't decide between them. The other was the Oxford Primary Illustrated Dictionary which was a slightly cheaper paperback. That one did not draw our attention like the DK dictionary but was more like a school reference dictionary rather than something you would browse through for fun. It was very informative and helpful with grammar etc., so together, they fulfilled his requirements adequately. Shame we had to buy 2 though.