In these forty life-altering, life-affirming, and extremely short short stories, the award-winning poet Naomi Shihab Nye proposes that no matter how great the divide between friends, siblings, life and death, classmates, enemies, happiness and misery, war and peace, breakfast and lunch, parent and child, country and city, there is, in fact, no long distance. Not anymore.
In these forty life-altering, life-affirming, and extremely short short stories, the award-winning poet Naomi Shihab Nye proposes that no matter how great the divide between friends, siblings, life and death, classmates, enemies, happiness and misery, war and peace, breakfast and lunch, parent and child, country and city, there is, in fact, no long distance. Not anymore.
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About the Author-
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Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and she spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a "wandering poet." She has spent more than forty years traveling the country and the world, leading writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages.
Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty books. Her books of poetry for adults and young people include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (a finalist for the National Book Award); A Maze Me: Poems for Girls; Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners; Honeybee (winner of the Arab American Book Award); Cast Away: Poems of Our Time (one of the Washington Post's best books of 2020); Come with Me: Poems for a Journey; and Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems. Her other volumes of poetry include Red Suitcase; Words Under the Words; Fuel; Transfer; You & Yours; Mint Snowball; and The Tiny Journalist. Her collections of essays include Never in a Hurry and I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven.
Naomi Shihab Nye has edited nine acclaimed poetry anthologies, including This Same Sky: Poems from Around the World; The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems from the Middle East; Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25; and What Have You Lost? Her picture books include Sitti's Secrets, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter, and her acclaimed fiction includes Habibi; The Turtle of Oman (winner of the Middle East Book Award) and its sequel, The Turtle of Michigan (honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award).
Naomi Shihab Nye has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Award, and "The Betty," from Poets House, for service to poetry, and numerous honors for her children's literature, including two Jane Addams Children's Book Awards. In 2011 Nye won the Golden Rose Award given by the New England Poetry Club, the oldest poetry-reading series in the country. Her work has been presented on National Public Radio on A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac. She has been featured on two PBS poetry specials, including The Language of Life with Bill Moyers, and she also appeared on NOW with Bill Moyers. She has been affiliated with the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin for twenty years and served as poetry editor at the Texas Observer for twenty years. In 2019–20 she was the poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine. She is Chancellor Emeritus for the Academy of American Poets and laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature, and in 2017 the American Library Association presented Naomi Shihab Nye with the 2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award. In 2018 the Texas Institute of Letters named her the winner of the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was named the 2019–21 Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In 2020 she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lif...
Reviews-
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Starred review from August 15, 2011
Thirty-nine very short stories offer glimpses into the everyday lives of young people.
How much can a writer say in a five-page story? It turns out, everything; if the devil is in the details, so is the world. In "Stay True Hotel," Jane observes couples walking hand in hand, people with tattoos, old people with canes, parents pushing prams, burgundy peonies in buckets, ginger ale with an orange slice—the "clicking and humming of the planet." The best of the stories present "fringe observers" happy to be invisible, extracting themselves from the crowd to observe a world full of mysteries. The spirit of Thoreau suffuses some of the stories, and in "Thoreau Is My Partner," Andy notices a cardboard coaster in his hotel room that quotes Thoreau: "Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each." As she does in her poetry, Nye achieves a perfect marriage of theme and structure in stories that reflect the moments, glimpses and epiphanies of growing up. Readers can dip in and out with ease, and writing teachers will find it a boon in the classroom.
Though the stories aren't linked, there is an accumulation of experience and feeling, and by the end of this fine collection readers will sense what life is like—what life means—for these young people. (Short stories. 12 & up)
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
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Starred review from November 1, 2011
Gr 7 Up-These short, seemingly unconnected stories are set in the current moment but told by different adolescent characters from around the world. Two girls with a passion for cooking face the disappointment of their cooking teacher; another searches for her father in San Marcos, TX; another buys socks in Cairo; and a young man deals with depressed parents in Nebraska, to name but a few. And yet Nye's stories are indeed connected, some loosely and others in more abstract ways. Despite place, gender, and other superficial differences, they all weave together a perspective on what it means to come of age in the contemporary world. Rich thematic threads-dealing with loss, accepting the responsibilities of maturity, negotiating misunderstandings, for example-can be found throughout. Nye's stories are the beginning, middle or end of longer stories waiting to be written. With her characteristic strong, often quirky characters, and with much pathos, these vignettes invite readers to make meaning of the story fragments. They're a bit like Chris van Allsburg's The Chronicles of Harris Burdick (Houghton Harcourt, 2011), but for a teen audience.-Jennifer Miskec, Longwood University, Farmville, VA -
Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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December 15, 2011
Grades 9-12 In 40 short stories, each 1,000 words or less, award-winning poet Nye introduces characters dealing with difficult life situations. There's Margo, whose parents' divorce feels as if it came out of the blue; Jane, whose father, reeling from the death of his wife, restlessly moves his daughter from one European city to the next; and Liyana, who learns over e-mail that her friend is in an Israeli jail. A few characters reappear intermittently, and careful readers will enjoy piecing together the connections. Nye sets her short stories in the U.S. and abroad, and her characters run the gamut from Texas natives to immigrants facing prejudice in this country. Current events are important to the narratives; news of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and protests in Jerusalem, for example, reach her characters via newspaper, e-mail, and TV. With prose that reads like poetry, Nye's powerful book can be savored story by story over time or devoured in one sitting. This offers a unique perspective on today's teenagers, who are growing up in an increasingly troubling, and increasingly small, world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.) -
January 1, 2012
The protagonists of each of these thirty-nine very short stories (one thousand words or fewer) are intelligent, articulate adolescents. We enter each story quickly, get a flash of insight or two, then exit, often wanting to know more about the characters' lives. The tales, persistently hopeful, will resonate most deeply with teens who, like the protagonists, crave meaningful connection with the wider world.(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
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Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)
"Nye's work opens readers' eyes to new worlds and experiences and does it with thoughtful simplicity." — Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)
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