The tortured mind of the grieving narrator in Poe's hypnotic poem is brought to life with a nearly equal measure of nightmarish and illustrative imagery. Rendered in dry point, the art's varying shades of black underscore the menacing tone of the verse. This sophisticated interpretation will surely attract older readers who are fans of the gothic.

Illustrations for poetry can sometimes overwhelm the verbal images and get in the way of the words, but in this small, handsome volume, Price's grim, sepia-tone stylized pictures, decorated with feathery, black cross-hatching, do a great job of evoking the brooding guilt, terror, grief, and love in Poe's famous poem.Using drypoint, Price, a fine artist and printmaker, blends contemporary details with images of the lost, radiant maiden and a terrifying black-beaked monster. As part of the Visions in Poetry series, this book will reacquaint older readers with the familiar chanting rhythms, while lengthy appended notes will spark discussion on both the poem and the art.

Gr 7 Up-Price has pulled an old masterpiece out of the closet, dusted it off, and illustrated it, and left it gleaming sinisterly for this generation to devour. Cross-hatched, shadowy art, created through drypoint printmaking, proves an ideal medium through which to capture the man's torturous slide into madness, the haunting memory of Lenore, and the raven's chilling persistence. Nowhere is the poem's insane fear better captured than on the final spread. Left with Poe's one last word of despair, "nevermore," readers encounter a drastically angular vision of the man crouched on his bedroom floor, surrounded by hastily drawn pencil sketches of the visions madly spinning in his head. Price's vision of The Raven not only haunts, but also brings Poe's work back to life. An ideal resource for teachers and students.-Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.