A Wonderful Picture Book Bio of Roget and His Thesaurus

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Summary

The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus is another excellent picture book biography by the award-winning duo of author Jen Bryant and illustrator Melissa Sweet. The research the two did and the way they incorporated it in both words and pictures makes this a 5-star book. I recommend The Right Word for ages 7 and up, with "up" including tweens, teens and adults. The story of Peter Mark Roget and the first thesaurus (What's a thesaurus?

) is inspiring, particularly when you consider that Roget's Thesaurus was first published in 1852, expanded and updated on a regular basis and versions of Roget's Thesaurus are still being published today.

The Story in Words and Pictures

Once you open The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus, you'll be struck by the visually arresting endpapers. The front endpapers are a colorful montage of period artwork and printing related to the wide range of words in Roget's book. The artwork throughout the book makes use of paintings, collages, ink and hand printed word lists and period ephemera  that complement the text of the book. In her Illustrator's Note, Sweet writes, "The idea of classification and scientific illustration crept into my collages, along with imagery from Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, old botanicals, vintage papers, book covers, type drawers, watercolor, and mixed media. The back endpapers list Roget's thousand words with an abbreviated Plan of Classification."

In her Author's Note, Jen Bryant writes about reading an early edition of Roget's Thesaurus and becoming interested in learning more about the author.

According to Bryant, in her research she discovered that Roget's life "...encompassed more drama and contradictions than anything I had written about in fiction. His transient and often lonely  childhood, his precocious intellect and nervous habits, his friendships with inventors, his travels, and his medical career - all of these combined to create a broad and fascinating life that I wanted to share with young people."

The book covers the life of Peter Mark Roget from his birth to the publication of the book and its lasting impact. Sweet's lists add a light note and yet add to readers' understanding since she creates lists that relate to the various stages of Roget's life in the 1800's. For example, at the beginning of the book, there's a list that begins with "1779 Born" and ends with Died 1869."

Between them, in descending order are the words, "beginning, baby, infant, tadpole, child, youth, lad, youngster, whippersnapper, student, adolescent, teen, scholar, grown up, manhood, middle age, prime of life, maturity, to wind up, draw to an end, close." If you and your kids love words, you will love this book. To learn more about the book's illustrations, watch the book trailer for The Right Word.

The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus is 42 pages long and contains a lot of information about Roget and how he came to write the book, beginning with the start of his list making when he was eight years old. In addition to the Author's Note and the Illustrator's Note at the end of the book, there are several other helpful resources. The two-page List of Principal Events includes both Roget's life and world events. There is a page with a selected bibliography, suggestions for further reading, and a source list for quotations. I was also interested to find on the next page s photograph of an actual page from Roget's original word book.

Author Jen Bryant majored in French at Gettysburg College and received a Master’s degree from Arcadia University. She has written fiction, nonfiction and poetry and writes for both children and adults. Her middle grade and teen books have earned a number of awards. Her books include: Pieces of Georgia, an International Reading Association Young Adult Choices Pick, The Fortune of Carmen Navarro, winner of Paterson Prize for Young People and Georgia’s Bones, a picture book about artist Georgia O’Keefe.

Melissa Sweet is most well known for her award-winning mixed media illustrations. Educated at Endicott College and the Kansas City Art Institute, Sweet has illustrated close to 100 books, including Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems, a children’s poetry collection compiled by Paul B. Janecczko. She is also the author and illustrator of several picture books, including Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade, for which she won the 2012 Robert F. Sibert Medal for informational books.

Their Picture Book Biographies

I particularly like the books that combine the talents of Jen Bryant, a careful researcher and excellent writer, and Melissa Sweet, a talented artist. In addition to The Right Word: Roget’s Thesaurus, Jen Bryant wrote and Melissa Sweet illustrated two other picture book biographies, both of which have garnered so many awards that I can’t even list them all.

For A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams that includes being recognized as a 2009 Caldecott Honor Book for picture book illustration and receiving the 2009 NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) Orbis Pictus Award for excellence in nonfiction. A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin won the 2014 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award, the ALA Schneider Family Book Award for ages 0-10 and was honored as an ALA Notable Children's Book and a a 2014 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award Honor Book,

(Sources: HarperCollins, Melissa Sweet, Maine Humanities Council, Jen Bryant’s website, Random House)

My Recommendation

I highly recommend The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus for all ages, 7 and up. I love words and still remember a class assignment to find synonyms for about 15 words.  The story itself and the artwork will engage readers.  Those familiar with Roget's Thesuarus will gain a new appreciation for the book and its creator. If I were a teacher, I would definitely want to use The Right Word in the classroom, particularly as an introduction to using a thesaurus. I'd also make use of The Right Word Discussion Guide.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.