Snow Toward Evening: A Year in a River Valley/Nature Poems

In this most recent book illustrated by landscape painter Locker, Frank has selected verses about nature by such notables as Langston Hughes, William Wordsworth and Edna St. Vincent Millay, and labeled each one with a month of the year. Locker has rendered lush scenes loosely illustrating each poem's setting. Although the poems--and the selection--are uniformly fine, and Locker's paintings are, as usual, marvelously composed and brilliantly colored, this work looks and feels more like an adult art book than a children's poetry book. Most of the verses do not have the distinctive rhythms and clever rhymes that capture children's ears, and the paintings do not have any strong human subjects. The results seem a little cold for most young readers. All ages. (Sept.)