Emily Dickinson

January 2, 1995
The Poetry for Young People series attempts to straddle the school and trade markets with these two volumes about America's best-known New England poets, but the results are uneven. Frost is superb, the poems introduced in a tone that is informative but not pedantic. Robert Frost's best work is organized into seasonal categories; an italicized gloss for each poem unobtrusively explains references and highlights themes. Sorensen's sketchy watercolors ground each poem in Frost's world of pastures, rose pogonias and yellow woods. Bolin's biographical interpretation of Emily Dickinson, on the other hand, is both coy and condescending. The reader is told, for example, that ``Emily may have seemed to some like a real `nobody' inside she knew she was somebody special.'' Chung's illustrations combine Holly Hobbie-style children with trite ornamentation; a rainbow springs from the center of a lily to accompany ``A word is dead'' while a pea pod containing heart-shaped peas illustrates other verse. Each book includes a brief biography of the poet and a short index. Ages 10-up.