Review: The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus

The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus by Jennifer Fisher Bryant

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Bryant and Sweet have something going on here! This is the third biography in their collaboration, and I look forward to the next one. I started out worried that the style was too much the same as [b:A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams|3238642|A River of Words The Story of William Carlos Williams|Jennifer Fisher Bryant|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347836624s/3238642.jpg|3273289], but it's really a broad style and palette that seems to be consistent across this series.

For this book, [a:Melissa Sweet|427613|Melissa Sweet|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1377800536p2/427613.jpg]Sweet made a powerful effort to illustrate concepts again and this puts her squarely in the complementary rather than corresponding relationship to the words--a mark of quality! Concepts: what it means to be consumed by lists and categories, what it means to be fascinated by data and scientific processes of collection. Her use of ephemera from the sciences was brilliant, and the busy pages are fun to look at on their own, adding a full and rich visual narrative to Bryant's writing. She provides a visual experience that shouts out the partners' research and use of primary sources!

I think the text suffers from the full timeline approach to biography. I understand that for a children's book there's this desire and maybe need to provide the full arc of the lifetime, but [a:Jennifer Fisher Bryant|500077|Jennifer Fisher Bryant|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1261105300p2/500077.jpg]Bryant clearly mentioned in her afterword some rich narrative threads that she merely hinted at in the writing. I would have liked to see one of these focused on and developed instead of the full timeline. Give me a deeper feel for who he is as a character, not just the timeline! If you're going in for round 4, gang, would you consider this slice of life approach? I still give it four stars despite my misgivings, because this is one of the top writer/illustrator partnerships working right now!



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