The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus

Bryant, Jen. 2014. The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus. Ill. by Melissa Sweet. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. ISBN 9780802853851

Plot Summary

Have you ever struggled to find just the right word? You can feel it on the tip of your brain, but you can’t quite grab it. . . so you grab your nearest thesaurus! In The Right Word, author Jen Bryant tells the story of Peter Roget, the man of many talents and interests who created a thesaurus that is still in print today, more than 150 years later. This lovely book will help young readers understand not only who Peter Roget was, but the beautiful thought that went into his "treasure house."

Critical Analysis

Author Jen Bryant uses simple, elegant prose to tell Roget’s story in this picture book biography. The accuracy of the book is supported by the Author’s Note, Selected Bibliography, For Further Reading, and Sources sections. There is limited dialog, restricted to the occasional word bubble. The pairing of the simple text and the visually stimulating illustrations give the reader the feeling of the cluttered jumble of ideas and concepts that was the impetus for Roget and his attempts to organize and control through his lists. 

Melissa Sweet, illustrator, created a visual banquet of both words and pictures in this slim volume. She captured the spirit of list-making Roget and sprinkled in lists of words, charts, and labels (even for the parts of the title page of the books!) throughout the book. Each of the vignettes supports and furthers the story in its own way. One of my favorites is the pictograph tucked off to the side of the main illustration, indicating how many friends he had at each of his many childhood homes. In the Illustrator’s Note at the end, Sweet discusses her inspiration, both literary and scientific for her colorful, playful, yet systematic drawings, paintings, and mixed media. My favorite part of the book is the back endpage, where she includes the original classification lists that Roget first used. It is a small light illuminating a corner of the brain of a complex, curious, varied man.

Professional Acclaim

2015 The Robert F. Sibert Medal

2015 Caldecott Honor Book

2015 Orbis Pictus Honor Book

From Kirkus Reviews: “Bryant's prose is bright and well-tuned for young readers. . . . Sweet tops herself -- again! -- visually reflecting Roget's wide range as a thinker and product of the Enlightenment.”

From Publisher’s Weekly: “Together with Bryant's sympathetic account, Sweet's gentle riot of images and words humanizes the man behind this ubiquitous reference work and demystifies the thesaurus itself."

Connections

As an introduction to this story, you could give students a pile of objects, such as plastic fruits & vegetables, shoes, silverware, keys, plastic animals, and ask them to sort them out. They will see how organizing and sorting helps to bring order to a jumbled mess, and makes it easier to find what you're looking for.

Other books by Jen Bryant & Melissa Sweet: 

A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin (2013),  ISBN 978-0375867125

A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams (2008), ISBN 978-0802853028