The Collectors: List 2

by A.S. King, Anna-Marie McLemore, Randy Ribay, David Levithan, Jenny Torres Sanchez, G. Neri, Jason Reynolds, M.T. Anderson
In ten young adult stories by different authors, characters reveal their personalities through descriptions of items in collections that are important to them.

This list covers “Take It from Me” by David Levithan–“Ring of Fire” by Jenny Sanchez.

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
40 words 7 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. antiquated
    so extremely old as seeming to belong to an earlier period
    We were over at my great-aunt Agnes’s apartment—an apartment as antiquated as her name.
  2. reverence
    a feeling of profound respect for someone or something
    In my head, I formed it into a fantasy story, a grand quest. To break a curse, she’d had to travel to all these lands and capture every single one of these spoons. I regarded them with a reverence that not even Agnes seemed to possess.
  3. discernible
    perceptible by the senses or intellect
    There were some spoons in that bottom row that dazzled me: the one with the Eiffel Tower as its handle; the one with the small gondola and the even smaller gondolier; the one with a tail shaped like a heart, with (mysterious!) no discernible location attached.
  4. inherently
    in an essential manner
    But instead, as I set about to do something I sensed was inherently wrong (i.e., stealing), I followed my own heist logic, and tried, in as little time as possible, to discern which of the spoons was the least valuable, the least interesting, the least likely to be missed.
  5. conform
    be similar, be in line with
    In other words, I loved rules and systems—as long as I was in control of them. My imagination was the place where I had the most power. Hour after hour, I was asked to conform to the world, and as a result I searched out all the small ways I could make the world conform to me.
  6. connoisseur
    an expert able to appreciate a field
    Braden was a fanatical connoisseur of all things Pokémon. He kept offering to trade me cards, and when I told him I didn’t have any, he started pestering me to buy some packs so we could trade.
  7. trove
    a valuable collection or treasure found hidden
    I started to catalog the sources of my trove, writing them on the backs of puzzle pieces.
  8. fervor
    feelings of great warmth and intensity
    Even the stickers I brought him were immediately pressed into place with a religious fervor.
  9. impose
    compel to behave in a certain way
    I was more his subject than his guest; it was always let’s play this and let’s play that. If I’d wanted my free will imposed upon, I could have just stayed at home.
  10. subtle
    difficult to detect or grasp by the mind or analyze
    After perilous seconds of searching, I was gifted with the sight of a sticker with a corner tabbing slightly out, the most subtle come-hither.
  11. render
    cause to become
    I barely had time to put my hand in my pocket when Dylan came in with a whole roll of paper towels and then, to my utter astonishment, proceeded to wheel it over the puddle as if it were a rolling pin. The juice was quickly sopped up, but the roll was rendered worthless.
  12. manifest
    reveal its presence or make an appearance
    In other words, it no longer felt like a victimless crime, and that manifested in my mind as anguish.
  13. surreptitiously
    in a secretive manner
    The next day, I surreptitiously ate four bananas, just so my mother would have to buy more.
  14. procure
    get by special effort
    Once she did, I procured the sticker and, with the eye of a master forger, ripped it in (roughly) the same place as the one I’d taken.
  15. appeal
    request earnestly; ask for aid or protection
    Then I had to get myself invited back over to Dylan’s house. The only way to do this was to appeal to the king himself, to tell him how much I missed his kingdom.
  16. arduous
    taxing to the utmost; testing powers of endurance
    Instead, we sat back down on the floor, and Dylan beat me three arduous times in a row.
  17. benign
    not dangerous to health; not recurrent or progressive
    It’s a benign neglect—I don’t think many kids actually proclaim, I am done with collections; collections are for babies! the way they do with, say, dolls or training wheels.
  18. nominal
    insignificantly small; a matter of form only
    The majority of teens let go of whatever they once gathered, because the gathering was nominal, almost obligatory. And the minority who keep hold? Well, they keep hold hard, because the gathering runs deep.
  19. balk
    show unwillingness towards
    I didn’t do this in order to gain access to their lives or their collections...but I didn’t balk when opportunities arose to suss out those friends who still collected, and to take a piece of whatever they’d gathered.
  20. filial
    relating to or characteristic of or befitting an offspring
    Saundra Diaz, who at least seven people of various genders wanted to ask to the homecoming dance, had never smoked a cigarette in her life, but she’d inherited an ashtray collection from her grandmother, and felt it her filial duty to continue, even if ashtrays were harder and harder to come by.
  21. kleptomaniac
    someone with an irrational urge to steal
    And then there was Hannah Coors, my first truly kleptomaniac friend. On the surface level, you would think we had a lot in common—i.e., she liked to steal, and I liked to steal.
  22. pilfer
    make off with belongings of others
    Some of these items were expensive—pilfered jewelry, electronics that required the circumvention of alarms.
  23. dubious
    open to doubt or suspicion
    She mistook it for me feeling guilty that she had gotten me something so pricey, and by such dubious means.
  24. nonchalance
    the trait of remaining calm and seeming not to care
    “I thought you only collected cats,” I said, with what I hoped was a catlike nonchalance.
  25. ominously
    in a manner suggesting something bad will happen
    She didn’t say “next time” ominously, but that’s how I heard it. I felt like she had to be planning something.
  26. breach
    act in disregard of laws, rules, contracts, or promises
    Or, worse, since I had breached the rules of nonaggression in our friendship, she would feel okay to steal whatever she liked from my room.
  27. excursion
    a journey taken for pleasure
    She stopped asking me along on her “excursions,” and soon we weren’t hanging out at all outside of school.
  28. deliberation
    careful consideration
    When you see someone you like weighing a decision, it creates a momentary suspense of the heart, and that’s what I felt right then, as if my pulse had gotten caught up in K’s silent deliberations.
  29. undermine
    weaken or impair, especially gradually
    But as the weekiversaries turned to monthiversaries, my feelings toward K started to undermine my sensibility and inflame my dramatic thoughts.
  30. logistical
    of or relating to the management of an operation or event
    Sometimes they’d end up passing me these notes, to ask me something logistical during class, where phones were forbidden.
  31. bout
    a period of indeterminate length marked by some condition
    But other times, the folded squares would end up in their book bag, and it would take a mighty bout of drama-negation for me to avoid seeking a moment to peek inside.
  32. accentuate
    stress or single out as important
    I could list all the songs we learned from each other by sharing headphones. I could accentuate the joy with which we sang along.
  33. anecdote
    short account of an incident
    I told K about Aunt Agnes, about other cousins and school friends stolen from, ending with Dylan. I made it sound like an anecdote, not an active condition.
  34. trivial
    of little substance or significance
    The second pile went into the garbage. The more trivial items.
  35. conjure
    summon into action or bring into existence
    She thought of the sound each letter made. Saw them in her mind as they had been on the walls of her first-grade classroom. She conjured up the glossy posters of a D—dog, an I—iguana, an A—apple.
  36. euphoria
    a feeling of great elation
    She wanted to get lost in the beautiful euphoria of physical attraction.
  37. broach
    bring up a topic for discussion
    And anytime she asked her father about it, he met her questions with anger, so she hadn’t broached the subject in years.
  38. defiantly
    in a rebellious manner
    “That never happened,” her father answered finally.
    Lucia met her father’s gaze; he stared at her defiantly.
  39. dissipate
    go away, scatter, or disappear
    But all she could think of was how much she’d wanted to say goodbye while Mamá was still somewhere in that hospital room, in the air, before her essence dissipated and disappeared into some unreachable forever.
  40. revel
    take delight in
    She reveled in the fear in his eyes and the trembling of his body.
Created on Wed Apr 03 10:40:42 EDT 2024 (updated Thu Apr 04 11:04:38 EDT 2024)

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