Violets Are Blue: "A Little Peek"–"Violets Are Blue"

by Barbara Dee
Following her parents' divorce, twelve-year-old Wren uses her interest in special effects makeup to make friends at a new school while overcoming struggles with her mother at home.

This list covers "A Little Peek"–"Violets Are Blue."

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3
25 words 23 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. defy
    resist or confront with resistance
    “Well, dahling, I can see I’m defying gravity,” she said.
  2. self-conscious
    excessively aware of your appearance or behavior
    “I really want you to be there! Except”—she turned hot pink and started giggling—“I’ll be super self-conscious if you watch.”
  3. offhand
    without previous thought or preparation
    I couldn’t think of one offhand, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.
  4. murky
    cloudy, dirty, and difficult to see through
    Since my last visit, she’d started a bunch of paintings she called “waterscapes”: snot-colored rivers, oceans with soapy-looking whitecaps, ponds with heart-shaped algae. In all these pictures, the sky was a bright, cheery blue, even if the water was murky.
  5. frank
    characterized by directness in manner or speech
    “It’s not fair for you to be in the middle, I know. And frankly, this divorce is hard enough on me without feeling like I’m being gossiped about, or analyzed, or pitied. Especially by your father and his beautiful young new wife.”
  6. ensemble
    a group of musicians playing or singing together
    “Plus I’m in the ensemble!”
    “That means the chorus?”
  7. casual
    not showing effort or strain
    “What’s up?" I asked as casually as I could, even though my heart was speeding.
  8. latke
    a pancake made of grated potato
    Mom wasn’t religious at all, and neither was Dad, who was Jewish. So we never made much fuss about Christmas or Chanukah: We’d get a small “holiday bush,” which Dad would plant in our garden, exchange a few low-key gifts (stuff like books, jigsaw puzzles, and mittens), and light a menorah. Oh, and Dad would make latkes.
  9. register
    enter into someone's consciousness
    So I figured if I stopped doing tech crew, it might not register with her at first, especially if she was working crazy hours. But after a few days, she’d definitely notice that I was around too much, in my room by myself—not socializing, like we’d agreed.
  10. spontaneous
    said or done without having been planned in advance
    I always plan ahead. My therapist wants me to be more spontaneous.
  11. lush
    produced or growing in extreme abundance
    Are the lashes long and lush, or thin?
  12. iconic
    relating to a symbolic figure
    What about the eyebrows: Are they thick? Overplucked? Or iconic—like Spider-Man's or the Grinch's?
  13. bristle
    a stiff fiber
    But then one day when I was rinsing the brushes, he walked over. He watched without saying anything as I wiped the bristles and added them to the bin where we kept supplies.
  14. squeamish
    easily disturbed or disgusted by unpleasant things
    Of course, if I was doing makeup for the show, I’d be touching Avery’s face, and maybe others’, too. Time to stop being so squeamish about this, really.
  15. benign
    not dangerous to health; not recurrent or progressive
    Heterochromia. A condition in which the iris is multicolored. In some cases the iris of one eye may be a different color from the other. Usually heterochromia is benign, and does not affect vision.
  16. pagan
    relating to a polytheistic, pre-Christian religion
    Eastern European pagan cultures considered heterochromia a sign that a newborn baby’s eyes had been swapped with the eyes of a witch.
  17. humble
    marked by meekness or modesty; not arrogant or prideful
    This one is a total product of my imagination. And in my humble opinion, those are always the best effects, because you’re not trying to copy someone's work.
  18. variation
    something a little different from others of the same type
    And every time you do the character, you can add some cool new variation—
  19. reception
    quality or fidelity of a broadcast
    “Because I had terrible cell reception! And anyway, I couldn’t talk.”
  20. scorch
    make very hot and dry
    Even though my throat felt scorched, my voice was too loud.
  21. theorem
    a proposition deducible from basic postulates
    And when he saw me using it to draw a 3D eyeball while Ms. Arroyo explained the Pythagorean theorem for the seventeenth time, he left two more pencils on my desk the next day.
  22. sappy
    very sentimental or emotional
    And were love duets always this sappy? The lyrics were kind of embarrassing, really. Hard to imagine singing that onstage without giggling.
  23. orthopedic
    of or relating to the treatment of bones or joints
    “You have a knee doctor?”
    “An excellent orthopedist at the hospital, okay? So don’t worry.”
  24. overwhelm
    charge someone with too many tasks
    Hey, I know I tell you a million different steps for each character. And I usually recommend a ton of products, right? For some of you, that's cool. But I never want anyone to feel overwhelmed.
  25. generic
    having no special or distinctive characteristics; unoriginal
    “And ‘blue’ is generic too. You should specify what blue you’re talking about: indigo, cornflower, cobalt, steel, sky—”
Created on Mon Mar 07 09:08:15 EST 2022 (updated Mon Mar 14 09:31:27 EDT 2022)

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