The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus - Hardcover

Jen Bryant has written numerous books for young readers,including Georgia's Bones and A River ofWords, winner of the Charlotte Zolotow Honor Award.Her book A Splash of Red (Knopf)received the Schneider Family Book Award and theNCTE Orbis Pictus Award for nonfiction. She lives inPennsylvania.

Melissa Sweet (www.melissasweet.net) hasillustrated many award winning books, including ARiver of Words (Eerdmans), a 2009 Caldecott Honorbook, and A Splash of Red (Knopf), an NCTEOrbis Pictus Award winner and a Sibert Honor book. Shealso wrote and illustrated Balloons OverBroadway (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), winner of the2012 Sibert Medal and the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award.Melissa lives in Maine.

-- Publishers Weekly (STARRED Review)
"Sweet envisions Roget's work as a shadow box crammed with the wonders of the natural world, adorned with exuberant hand-lettered typography. 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."

-- Kirkus Reviews (STARRED Review)
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. Injecting her watercolor palette with shots of teal, scarlet and fuchsia, Sweet embeds vintage bits (ledger paper, type drawers, botanical illustrations and more), creating a teeming, contemplative, playfully celebratory opus. In a word: marvelous!"

-- Booklist (STARRED review)
"In brilliant pages teeming with enthusiasm for language and learning, Bryant and Sweet joyfully celebrate curiosity, the love of knowledge, and the power of words."

-- School Library Journal (STARRED review)
“Those who have relied upon a thesaurus . . . will gain a greater appreciation for the reference tool in this beautifully designed picture book biography of its creator, Peter Roget. . . . Busy and exuberant, Sweet’s charming watercolor illustrations, layered over collages of vintage images and fonts, capture Roget’s passion for classification while also providing readers new opportunities for discovery. . . . Expertly researched and well written, Bryant’s narrative not only details the creation of the thesaurus; it also conveys a sense of Roget the man. . . . An excellent illustrated biography.”

The Horn Book (STARRED review)
"Apt language and ingenious imagery. . . . both decorous and warm."

-- Capitol Choices
"From its busy end pages this lively book brings to life a creator and the words he was fascinated by."

New York Times
"Spirited portrait of the Swiss-born Victorian who found an ingenious way to help people say what they mean."

Washington Post
"Young readers will see that each page of this book, like each page of 'Roget’s Thesaurus,' contains multitudes."

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
"Encourages a sense of wonder. . . . Myriad visual temptations luring viewers into a fine browsing experience."

Midwest Book Review
“The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus is a fabulous illustrated junior biography, celebrating the richness and power of words, and the wonderful story of the man who organized and listed words to make them accessible to all who are literate.”
 
Through the Looking Glass Children’s Book Reviews
“In this remarkable book Jen Bryant’s lyrical text is paired with Melissa Sweet’s wonderful multimedia artwork to give young readers a compelling story about a man whose book of words, and their meanings, is now a valuable tool used by writers of all kinds.”