cover image The Classic Treasury of Children's Poetry

The Classic Treasury of Children's Poetry

. Running Press Book Publishers, $9.98 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-89471-802-1

Lacking a distinctive style--and somewhat short on originality, the poems and illustrations in this book have a familiar, mass market look. Representing the work of a number of artists, cloying paintings of rainbows, puckish nineteenth-century fairies and round-faced children wearing nightcaps share space with nicely rendered nature drawings. Egan's selection relies almost entirely on frequently anthologized poems by such authors as Christina Rossetti, Edward Lear and Robert Louis Stevenson; many are lackluster verses attributed to Anonymous. Compared to the lively and substantive Imaginary Gardens , Sing a Song of Popcorn or Side by Side (all recently published), this large-format addition to the rapidly increasing roster of poetry collections contains few treasures. All ages. (May)