Very nicely done picture book biography of Emma Lazarus, best known for writing the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty that has become nearly as famous as the statue herself. We see Emma as a small child, with "plenty of everything," growing up in an environment of people who had "plenty of everything." We see her in her privileged setting, but then Emma visits Ward's Island and meets very poor immigrants, Jews like herself who had made the long, hard journey to America. Emma wants to help them, and begins to write about the immigrants in the newspaper and in poems to raise awareness of the poverty in which they lived. When Emma hears about the statue being constructed in France, she is asked to write something for a collection that would be sold to help pay to construct a pedestal for the great statue. Although the statue had nothing to do with immigrants, Emma imagined how it would be the first thing new arrivals would see as they entered New York Harbor, and decided to write a poem from the point of view of the statue. The author describes how Emma didn't see the statue erected, but after her death the poem was engraved on a plaque and placed inside the entrance to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty for visitors to read. The poem became so famous that schoolchildren learned it and the poem was even set to music by Irving Berlin.

The book includes an author's note with additional historical details and of course the complete text of the poem, entitled "The New Colossus."