(4) YA Illustrated by Clement Hurd. While the author's fans and children's-book historians are probably the main audience for this reissue of Stein's 1939 Modernist classic, it's good to have Rose and her blue- and pink-paged story back in print. Unfortunately, a smaller trim size makes the text cramped and even more off-putting than Stein's repetitive but frequently hypnotic writing.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton

(4) 4-6 Illustrated by Giselle Potter. A manuscript previously published in scholarly collections of Stein's works is illustrated for a young audience (ostensibly). Stein's prose is magnificent to read aloud, and Potter's paintings successfully merge the abstract with the concrete. Still, the length of the book and the lack of narrative will hinder all but the most determined readers from following through.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth