She suggests the darker parts of his life, but mostly she shows readers a person who was a passionate learner, passionate creator of word lists, and someone who figured out how to put those passions together to create a unique and wonderful book, the thesaurus. She communicates beautifully just why such lists are so worthwhile by having Roget answer his mother’s questions with a single word and then mull over what better ones there might be. Bryan elegantly presents Roget’s lifelong passion for word lists as well as much more. Roget was clearly one brilliant man who loved all sorts of things, words among them. Having now written a book about a real person myself, I’m all the more in awe of anyone who takes on a full biography for children, managing to economically pull out just what is needed about that person’s life for young readers to best appreciate his accomplishments. Bryant again captures the essence of a complicated individual in spare and beautifully crafted text. And now that I’ve seen it, let me tell you - it was worth the wait. And so having adored Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet’s glorious Caldecott Honor A River of Words, I was agog with anticipation waiting for their latest, The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus. ABC books, abecedarian novels, lipograms, everything and anything that plays with the art of words is art right up my alley. I love words and I love art that plays with words.
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