Maya Angelou, Poetry for Young People is a beautiful edition for kids of all ages. The editor, Edwin Graves Wilson, PhD. did a wonderful job of choosing a group of poems that give the reader the feeling that they are strolling though a town full of viewpoints of various inhabitants rounding into a full experience of an area and an era.
Matching the poems in their beauty, are the rich illustrations by Jerome Lagarrigue. Dark tones overlay rich colors to give a s sultry tone to the book. The faces in particular come to life at the artist's hand and the author's prose in Maya Angelou, Poetry for Young People It's wonderful to be able to revisit poems that have become old friends through the years, now augmented with such wonderful illustrations, thereby giving them a new dimension.
A minor criticism of Maya Angelou, Poetry for Young People is the use of frustratingly small type on the glossary notations on many of the pages. You would have to be a young person to be able to read them without assistance. Also, a couple of the poems are on pages where the text overlays one of the illustrations. Unfortunately, this becomes very hard to read. Even with these small imperfections the book is an excellent pick for kids interested in poetry. Maya has a wonderful voice that everyone should read at some point in their life, and quite frankly regardless of your age, there's no time like the present.
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