Emily Writes
Emily Dickinson and Her Poetic Beginnings
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
Jane Yolen's Emily Writes is an imagined and evocative picture book account of Emily Dickinson’s childhood poetic beginnings, featuring illustrations by Christine Davenier.
As a young girl, Emily Dickinson loved to scribble curlicues and circles, imagine new rhymes, and connect with the natural world around her. The sounds, sights, and smells of home swirled through her mind, and Emily began to explore writing and rhyming her thoughts and impressions. She thinks about the real and the unreal. Perhaps poems are the in-between.
This thoughtful spotlight on Emily’s early experimentations with poetry offers a unique window into one of the world’s most famous and influential poets.
Christy Ottaviano Books
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yolen and Davenier portray Dickinson as a small child who "tiptoes into Father's study,/ being quiet as dust" and finds "a scrap of paper" and a "gnawed pencil stub, too... Perhaps, she thinks, I will make a poem." Historical details her siblings, Lavinia and Austin; her mother's illness ("Mother,/ who makes her feel rainy"); her father's emotional distance add ballast to the imagined account. Most delightful is Mrs. Mack, of the family that bought the Dickinson family house and lived in it while the Dickinsons rented rooms. Yolen's Mrs. Mack encourages Emily: "Hope, my dear girl,/ That's the best rhyme for envelope. Though in a pinch you might try cope or lope." Though an author's note suggests that not much is actually known of Dickinson's childhood, nor of her relationship with Mrs. Mack, Yolen conjures appealing possibilities. Davenier's loose-lined, color-washed ink illustrations capture childlike joy and curiosity. Ages 4 8.
