This beloved short story - a classic coming-of-age tale by the author of The Country of the Pointed Firs - is here gloriously illustrated with pencil drawings by Maine artist Douglas Alvord. Sylvia, a city girl more at home with animals than with people, has come to the Maine Woods to live with her grandmother. One summer afternoon in the late 1800s, her life is changed forever when she meets an attractive young ornithologist searching for birds to snare, stuff, preserve, and display. With consummate literary skill, Jewett dramatizes the storm of emotions Sylvia feels both for this young man and for the natural world, and especially for the rare white heron the ornithologist is so eager to possess. Mr. Alvord's pictures are as delicate as Sylvia's emotions and as precise as Jewett's descriptions of Sylvia's inner struggle.
Where the Deer Were FROM THE PUBLISHER Pastoral, narrative, deliberately lyrical, the poetry of Kate Barnes is set solidly in the rural Maine countryside, and in the literary tradition in which she was raised (her father was Henry Beston, her mother Elizabeth Coatsworth). There she lives near the house that Beston made famous in Northern Farm, drawing strength and inspiration from the coastal landscape to steady her through the changing seasons of life. This is wise and moving verse: not abstract or self-consciously "modern," but clean and convincing - verse, as Robert Creeley has commented, "of a deep and heartfelt clarity." These are poems that examine and celebrate the ingredients of our humanity: friendship and wonder, loneliness and endurance, sexuality and unrequited longing, familial ties and the overriding relationship of the individual to nature, to landscape and animals, and to the living earth itself. Printed letterpress and featuring six specially commissioned woodcuts by the renowned Vermont artist Mary Azarian, Where the Deer Were is a treasure that combines the best of poetry, art, and fine bookmaking.
FROM THE CRITICS Booknews Pastoral, narrative, deliberately lyrical poetry set in the rural Maine countryside, and in the literary tradition in which Barnes was raised (her father was Henry Beston, her mother Elizabeth Coatsworth). Beautiful production--printed letterpress and featuring six specially commissioned woodcuts by Vermont artist Mary Azarian. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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