Discovery

Library Journal

Gr 5-8-A Nobel prize-winner/poet laureate's previously unpublished poem is translated into a bright picture book through Radunsky's energetic, colorful collages. The design sings; the words do not. Brodsky's reflections on the founding of America do little more than plod: "In the beginning there were just waves/hammering at the obstacles./The stars were starring to constant raves/but had no Oscars." "Don't you think that this land still has a few/secrets? That, huge and silent,/it waits for their being discovered by you,/since Nature is out on assignment?" Would that publishers let sleeping poets (and their less-than-stellar poems) lie.-Kathleen Whalin, Greenwich Country Day School, CT Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

The

The book's classic feel and brilliant mixed media illustrations by Vladilmir Randusnsky beg for repeated readings by children and adults of all ages.

Kirkus Reviews

Brodsky (for adults, On Grief and Reason, 1996, etc.) challenges the notion that a place—any place—can be truly "discovered" by humans, as if willed into being by their intents and designs. His poem is also, more quietly, a promise of wonder that the world holds in wait for those open to its charms. The book has a Genesis-like, Big-Bang beginning, when "there were just waves/hammering at the obstacles." Clouds sent down rain, fish came, birds alighted on the new land, "yet they were just pilgrims, and very few/of them evolved into settlers." By the time Europeans arrived, America was an old place. "They stepped ashore and they rode across/this land of milk and honey,/and they settled in with their many laws,/their cities, their farms, their money." Although this is a picture book, with collage artwork from Radunsky that is fluent in its rude edges and construction-paper color, the text claims readers' heed as it signals a gracious, elemental style: "When you are a continent, you don't mince/words and don't crave attention." (Picture book/poetry. 6-10)