THE EAGER ZEST

A spotty and polyglot selection of poetry and prose-primarily autobiographical- written by many authors of varying note concerning their respective childhood experiences with the wonderful world of books, this anthology contains a wide range from Keats' ""On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer"" to a prose selection by Ellery Queens, melodramatically prefaced by, ""Oh, unforgettable day!... I opened the book with no knowledge that I stood- rather, I sat- on the brink of my fate."" The majority of the prose pieces are entirely too short to contain or sustain either subject matter or interest and often deteriorate into a kind of annotated list of ""books read as a child"". With the exception of a few well-known poems and a few delightful prose pieces by James Thurber, Graham Greene, and Eudora Welty, this is extremely tedious reading.