To gain a bit of experience and maturity, Peter became a tutor to two teenage boys.Īt last Peter set up his medical practice in Manchester, England, where he took care of the factory workers, who “were poor and often sick.” At night Peter worked on his book of lists, and in 1805 he declared it finished. Upon graduation at 19, his uncle told him that patients would be wary of a doctor so young. How wonderful it felt to find just the right word.”Īn idea crept into Peter’s mind for a book where “all the ideas in the world could be found in one place,” and people could “find the best word, the one that really fit.” When Peter was 14 he entered medical school in Edinburgh, Scotland. What was the right word? Peter began a new list: Worry, fret, grieve, despair, intrude, badger, annoy, plague, provoke, harass. His “mother didn’t approve, and Peter told her not to worry-but “perhaps worry wasn’t quite the right word. And when he put them in long, neat rows, he felt as if the world itself clicked into order.”Īs a teenager Peter was shy, preferring to wander the London gardens alone, “making lists of all the plants and insects,” as in one of his favorite science books by Linnaeus.

“Words, Peter learned, were powerful things. Peter’s mother hovered and worried over her son, and he always told her he was “fine.” “Although, to be honest, Peter thought, fine wasn’t quite the right word.” As the years went by, Peter added lists to his book, prompting his mother to complain about his constant “scribbling.” But Peter looked at his lists differently. Courtesy of Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Image copyright Melissa Sweet, 2014, text copyright Jen Bryant, 2014. On one side were the Latin words he knew on the other were their definitions. But this was not a book of stories or even one story it was a book of lists. When he was eight years old, he began writing his own book titled: Peter, Mark, Roget.

It would not be his first move, and in the absence of long-time friends, Peter found companionship in books. While just a young child, Peter, along with his mother, his uncle, and his baby sister Annette, travel to their new home following the death of his father. Today, spice up your speech and writing with the perfect word to express all the nuances of life! The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus Written by Jen Bryant | Illustrated by Melissa Sweet Today we celebrate that most marvelous, stupendous, spectacular, cool, awe-inspiring, remarkableand-one from my early youth-groovy book, the thesaurus! Without its incredible cross-referenced lists of synonyms and antonyms, the world would be much more boring, dull, lackluster, monotonous place.

The Right Word by Jen Bryant