This small book would serve nicely as an introduction to classical mythology for the middle grades and interested adults as well. Spires' tone as she retells the tales of not only Arachne, but of Pandora, Orpheus and Eurydice, Sisyphus, Endymion and others as well, is just wry and arch enough to be quite delightful and so appealing. This is captured very well in Gerstein's simple and almost cartoonish illustrations. It's just so fun to hear Eurydice saying "I was married to Orpheus for about fifteen minutes when I was bitten by a poisonous snake and brought down to the underworld. So much for my happiness." Spires' characterizations of these well-known archetypes are always on the mark. The cast of characters list at the end of the book is also useful, if not essential, and also set in a droll prose. The work well fills the gap between the D'Aulaires' classic Book of Greek Myths and the more adult By Jove! Brush Up Your Mythology by Michael Macrone and the also wonderful and more recent Friendly Guide to Mythology by Nancy Hathaway. Entertaining and painlessly edifying, all.

I first found Elizabeth Spires' poem "Truro" published in The New Yorker when I was in high school, and it became one of my "foundation" poems, the poems that inspired me to read and eventually write poetry. Now years later, I am still captivated by her work.

Worldling speaks eloquently and sharply about universal experiences, framing them in terms both unexpected and completely familiar. One of my other favorite poems in this collection is "Theatre of Pain", a searing, honest, and beautiful account of labor and childbirth. Elizabeth Spires gives a voice to the unspeakable things:

TRURO

I found a white stone on the beach
inlaid with a blue-green road I could not follow.
All night I'd slept in fits and starts,
my only memory the in-out, in-out, of the tide.
And then morning. And then a walk,
the white stone beckoning, glinting in the sun.
I felt its calm power as I held it
and wished a wish I cannot tell.
It fit in my hand like a hand gently
holding my hand through a sleepless night.
A stone so like, so unlike,
all the others it could only be mine.

The wordless white stone of my life!

"I am a mouse, a white mouse. My name is Emmaline. Before I met Emily, the great poet of Amherst, I was nothing more than a crumb gatherer, a cheese nibbler, a mouse-of-little-purpose. There was an emptiness in my life that nothing seemed to fill. All that changed the day I moved into the Dickinson residence on Main Street..." Emmaline moves into the simple, quiet, sunny upstairs bedroom, and begins her new life in the wainscoting of Emily's room. She observes the Dickinson family, and is most fascinated by her new roommate, Emily. "She always wore white. She seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once, fluttering through the house like a ghost, stirring up a batch of gingerbread in the kitchen, or walking in the garden, lost in reverie..." Emily is always sitting at her little desk in deep concentration, writing and scribbling on small scraps of paper, and this intrigues the little mouse. When a small scrap finally lands on the floor near Emmaline's door, she snatches it up and begins reading. "Imagine my surprise when I realized I was holding a poem! The words spoke to me. These were my feelings exactly, but ones I had always kept hidden for fear the world would think me a sentimental fool..." Emmaline turns the paper over and words begin to pour out of her; a poem of her own. Then she returns the scrap with her new poem on the back to Emily's desk. That night while Emmaline slept, Emily read her poem and wrote back, slipping the note paper under her little mouse door. "I'm Nobody! Who are you?/Are you-Nobody-too/Then there's a pair of us!/Don't tell! they'd banish us-you know!..." And that, as they say, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship..... Elizabeth Spires has written an engaging, gentle, and evocative introduction to the great poet, Emily Dickinson. Her charming and creative story, told often in poems passed back and forth between mouse and Myth, is sometimes poignant, often humorous, and always enlightening. Claire Nivola's black and white sketches complement the text beautifully, and together word and art paint a lovely portrait of the elusive and reclusive Dickinson and her genius, with great insight. Perfect for youngsters 9-12, The Mouse Of Amherst makes an even better read aloud book the entire family can share, and includes an Author's note about Emily Dickinson's life and her poetry to augment and enhance the story and open interesting discussions. This sweet little treasure is sure to whet the appetite of both young and old, and send kids out looking for more. It works well as a companion book to Jeanette Winter's Emily Dickinson's Letters To The World, and Michael Bedard's Emily.

Emmaline is a mouse who lives in a house in Emily Dickinson's room. They become friends very quickly and write poems together.

This was an excellent book, and I recommend it to everyone.

Emmaline is a mouse who lives behind the wainscoting of Emily Dickinson's bedroom and is a small, but courageous writer. The Mouse Of Amherst is a unique and effective little story for young children that aptly introduces wonderful poetry woven into the warm and superbly crafted story. Illustrations by Claire A. Nivola are perfect augmentations to Elizabeth Spires's engaging and memorable tale.

My kids keep coming back to this book to their favorites to find the clue that reveals the answer. The book jacket mentions that the riddles "recall more ancient queries-the question rhymes from Mother Goose . . . or the riddle game between Bilbo baggins and Gollum in _The Hobbit_." They also reminded me of Beatrix Potters' _The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin_. The illustrations and actions in this book also give clues just like that story. Some clues are deliberately misleading, like seeing live horses galloping into the ocean when the real answer--seahorse--is instead carefully sculpted into the clouds. There is a pleasing mix of solving ability. My 5 year old was successful at a few, while a couple were a bit difficult for me. I would wait for the lower priced paperback edition to come out, as there are only 26 riddles.

"Letter from Swan's Island" stands out as the brilliant poem of this collection. It has audacity-- that is, the narrator seems confident in an idiosyncratic presentation of life. The grand poem behind this poem is Marianne Moore's "The Steeple Jack."

Consider:

"It could not be dangerous to be living /
in a town like this, of simple people,/
who have a steeple-jack placing danger-signs by the church /
while he is gilding the solid- /
pointed star, which on a steeple /

stands for hope." (Moore "The Steeple Jack).

then:

"... Is evil possible here /where everyone lives so individually / and nature appears to be neutral / toward everything but itself?" (Spires "Letter...").

You see how these narrators consider landscapes similarly-- thinking about the possibilities of life in relation to nature and the nature of people living in the area. "[danger]" and "evil" are responded to similarly.

The language of Elizabeth Spires' collection maintains a laconic quality that gives it an air of elegance. A lot of times, this allows reading to move on smoothly-- like you were reading a Frost poem. But this collection's sensibility is different from Frost's. "Crazy Quilt" is a strong poem. It is a remembrance of childhood where "mother" and "father" are like (presumably)"sun" and "moon" ("at odds with one another," or like "dog" and "calico cat"). The narrator finds "unreasoning," remembering childhood; it is like the title "Crazy Quilt"-- that is the conceit here. To find the mother, particularly, in the quilt is the quest of this questing poet. In this sense, it becomes a sort of ars poetika about mother poets in relation to the successors.

Overall, the collection becomes worthy if you do some close readings. Nonetheless, the read is enjoyable, the voice original. It is not a pretentious poet here. This makes me want to get her new book when it comes out in September 2002.