Their smiles and excitement says it all. The way the pupils engage in this brightly-coloured illustrated book – you'd never guess it's a dictionary they're holding.

It's called The Usborne Illustrated Dictionary – and Merivale School's 17 Year 5 pupils are loving it.

Merivale School Year 5 pupils Te Ihi Hemopo, 10, Annie-Lee Tukaki-Johnson, 9, Jade Walker, 10, Hemi Ormsby, 10, and Cody-Rei Hunapo-Harrison, 9. Photo by Zoe Hunter.

School principal Jan Tinetti can almost guarantee her Year 5s will be doing homework during the school holidays, with their new dictionaries gifted by Otumoetai Rotary Club.

'They really love it,” says Jan, who reckons the dictionaries will set them up beautifully for their last year at the school in 2015.

'Because it's such an engaging dictionary, they'll actually sit there and read it.”

Featuring about 1000 illustrations, 10,000 entries and 20,000 definitions printed in full colour on 288 pages, the dictionary is one of the best Jan says she's ever worked with.

'[That's] because of the pictorial nature of it and the fact that it's a very easy one for the children to navigate their way through.

'It's colour-coded and the kids actually have favourite pages.

'Now I never had favourite pages in my dictionary when I was growing up.”

The book retails for about $30 – a figure Jan believes most parents of children at the decile one school can't afford to throw around.

'It's theirs to take home. This allows them to have this important tool to help them with their learning at home and at school.”

Former Rotary International world president Bill Boyd visited the school in late-November to personally donate the dictionaries to the pupils.

Bill believes many children in low decile schools struggle with aspects of English or literacy, so it's hugely important for these pupils to have access to this learning tool.

'It's interesting because you get the odd person who says dictionaries are old news and nowadays everybody looks up spelling on the computer,” says Bill.

'But these are much more than just spelling.”