Emma Lazarus lived in New York City with her well-to-do family and was a writer from a very early age. Her father privately published a collection of her poems when she was only 17, and the next year a publishing house followed suit. She met Ralph Waldo Emerson at a party, and he praised her work and sent her instruction and reading suggestions. She wrote for the Century magazine and, inspired by her editor there, worked tirelessly for Jewish immigrants. “The New Colossus,” the poem for which she is best known, was placed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty only after her death. Silverman’s language is regrettably clichéd and romanticized, and that is carried over in the over-bright colors and nervous line of the pictures. Schuett uses a spiraling swirl of pastels, dots and stars to denote thinking and creativity. While it is in keeping with the tone set by the text, it serves to distract. A much stronger picture book for the same audience is Linda Glaser and Claire Nivola’s Emma’s Poem (2010). (Picture book/biography. 7-9)
