Edna - Hardcover

Burleigh, Robert; Millay, Edna St. Vincent

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0531332462 ISBN 13: 9780531332467

Publisher: Orchard Books, 2000

Synopsis

Uses the imagined viewpoint of Edna St. Vincent Millay to recreate her early years as a poet in New York City, and includes her poem "Recuerdo" and a brief profile of her life.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Burleigh is the author of many books for children including Flight: the journey of Charles Lindbergh, which won the Orbus Pictus award. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Young environmentalists should enjoy this suspenseful novel about a boy fighting his fathers employer to save an endangered bird. Taylors father, Tom, is the gamekeeper for Mr. Harris, who breeds pheasants as game for hunters on his English country estate. Harris, a thoroughly loathsome villain, despises all predators as vermin, especially birds of prey. Taylor has been raised with the same values and willingly helps his father kill these animals until he learns that an endangered bird, a red kite, has nested in the area. Taylor steals its eggs on orders from Harris. But knowing that only 24 kites remain in Britain, he saves one egg. Taylor and his friend, Alan, secretly raise the chick, name her Teresa, and release her into the wild, hoping she can survive. Harris shoots her and remains determined to find and kill the wounded bird. Taylor and his father must wrestle with moral choices and the probability that they will lose their home and income if they help the beautiful creature, but the struggle helps them to rebuild their own relationship. Burgess includes explanations of the British gamekeeping system and the history of red kites for American readers, so that it is clear why the situation even exists. Sometimes funny, often gripping, Burgesss (Smack, 1998, etc.) powerful story will give readers something to think about for a long time. (authors note) (Fiction. 10-14) . . . Burleigh, Robert EDNA Illus. by Joanna Yardley Orchard (32 pp.) $15.95 paper $16.99 paper 0-531-33246-2 Burleigh (Hercules, 1999, etc.) and Yardley (The Bracelet, 1993, etc.) have imagined how the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay might have been inspired to write one of her most famous poems, Recuerdo. The gouache and pen-and-ink illustrations reflect the Greenwich Village of the late teens and early 20s of the past century in matte and somewhat static tableaux. Edna lives in the Village, loves its twisty small streets, loves her life with her friends, writers, and artists, staging plays and readings for each other. She loves the city, and spends a night riding back and forth on the Staten Island Ferry with a friend. It is her memory of that night that grows, like a seed sprouting, says the text, into the poem that begins, We were very tired, we were very merry / We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. Burleigh has translated Millays passion and exuberance into a series of exclamation points that unfortunately captures neither, and the poem itself tells the story of how the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold much better than the picture book manages. None of the magic of the Michael Bedard/Barbara Cooney Emily (1992), alas. (afterword) (Picture book. 5-9)-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orchard Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0531332462
• ISBN 13: 9780531332467
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Yardley Joanna