I've been playing a lot of Words With Friends lately on my iPhone, engaging in verbal combat with my mother, father, and random strangers in spare moments snatched from my day. Z has been eagerly horning in on this Scrabble-like action, making it clear that she's ready for word-building games. Enter Scrabble Junior.

In a world where most classic board games have a nonsensical "Junior" version (Hasbro is a major offender in this category), Scrabble Junior is a surprisingly agile adaptation. One side of the board of this version of Scrabble for kids six and up features larger, fewer, blank spaces for building words in traditional Scrabble manner - wisely eliminating the special spaces and even point values for letters - and the other, the truly ingenious side, features a completed board for the placement of tiles to spell predetermined words. This training-wheels version works better than it might sound; the rules are challenging enough for a six-year-old just getting down the basics of word-constructing game (letters must be placed in left-to-right order, and play consists of placing two letters from your hand), and it's easy for older players to help younger kids figure out the gameplay. Z is thrilled to play yet another big person game and enjoys the challenge of putting some longer words together than she's used to reading or writing. We'll soon graduate to the other side of the board, no doubt, where we can construct simple words together in the semi-collaborative play mode we use to teach Z most games.

We also appreciate that this game consists entirely of cardboard pieces, not plastic. The board, letter squares, and point tiles are all cardboard, making the game both more affordable (it sells on Amazon.com for just over $13) and less wasteful.

This game was purchased by us at a store, not sent by a company for review. We highly recommend it for kids ages eight to ten or so.