So bright, beautiful, or impressive that it almost overwhelms you

📝 The fireworks ended in a dazzling burst of gold and silver.

📖 When the drawings are unrolled, the room gasps: a hundred dazzling dresses, each one more beautiful than the last.

Remarkably great in size, amount, or skill

📝 The young chess player had a prodigious memory for every game she had seen.

📖 A hundred finished drawings is a prodigious amount of work for one child, done quietly and alone up on Boggins Heights.

Having a natural skill or ability to do something very well

📝 She was a talented singer long before anyone taught her a note.

📖 All along, the plain girl in the corner was the most talented artist in the school, and nobody had thought to wonder.

Having an unusually great natural ability

📝 The gifted young pianist could play a tune by ear after hearing it once.

📖 Wanda turns out to be gifted beyond anything her classmates imagined, her drawings far finer than their own.

Full of new and original ideas; showing a lively imagination

📝 His imaginative story turned the school car park into a pirate sea.

📖 Each dress is wildly imaginative, in colours and shapes no one else in the class would ever have dreamed up.

Filled with brilliant, creative ideas, as if guided by something greater

📝 It was an inspired idea to hold the concert out under the stars.

📖 There is something inspired in Wanda's drawings, as though the hundred dresses she only ever imagined had finally found a way out.

Made with great care and lots of fine, complicated detail

📝 The cake was elaborate, covered in tiny sugar flowers and golden leaves.

📖 The dresses are elaborate, trimmed and patterned with a care that must have taken Wanda hour after hour.

Producing bright, clear, powerful pictures in the mind

📝 She described the market in such vivid colours you could almost smell the spices.

📖 The colours are so vivid that the drawings seem to glow against the dull classroom walls.

Something done or given to show respect, thanks, or love

📝 The garden was planted as a tribute to the children who once played there.

📖 Though the girls do not yet know it, two of the hundred dresses are a quiet tribute, drawn with love for the very girls who teased her.

Agreed on by absolutely everyone

📝 The vote was unanimous: every single hand in the room went up.

📖 The decision is unanimous; there is no argument at all that Wanda's hundred dresses have won the contest.

To look at something with pleasure and respect, or to think highly of someone

📝 They stopped to admire the view from the top of the hill.

📖 The girls who mocked Wanda now stand and admire her work, not yet understanding what their admiration has cost.

Great respect and high regard for someone

📝 The old teacher was held in great esteem by everyone who had learned from her.

📖 Too late, Wanda is held in the esteem she always deserved, praised by a class that had only ever laughed.

To respect and admire someone very deeply

📝 In the village they revere the doctor who stayed through every hard winter.

📖 By the end of the day the children almost revere the missing girl whose talent has left them speechless.

Extremely beautiful and delicate, made with great skill

📝 The ring held one small, exquisite diamond.

📖 Each dress is exquisite, so finely drawn that the richest girls in class could never have matched it.

A work of outstanding skill; an artist's very best piece

📝 The painting is considered the artist's greatest masterpiece.

📖 The hundred drawings together are a masterpiece, and the girl who made them is already gone.

Having many small, detailed parts woven finely together

📝 The clock's intricate workings were made of hundreds of tiny wheels.

📖 The patterns are intricate, each dress covered in detail so fine you have to lean close to see it all.