Nye's (Going Going, reviewed above) sprawling collection of more than 70 poems run the gamut from capturing a moment to probing more abstract ideas and many seem right for a wider audience than just females. The best poems take a detailed image and expose its wider application to daily life. For instance, in Rose, a spider and her delicate web offer a lesson in the beauty that results from measured, persistent care. Big Head, Big Face boasts the merits of simplicity by contrasting a small drawer with a big drawer. Several poems on vocabulary grow awkwardly abstract. The Word Peace takes a common school exercise (making many small words from the letters in one long word) and distorts the idea just enough to be confusing (Peace for example contained the crucial vowels of/ Eat and Easy. If people Ate together/ they would be less likely to Kill one another). But there's plenty of humor here in contemplating language, too. Take the poem You're Welcome! (People who say No problem'/ instead of You're welcome'/ have a problem they don't even/ know about) or a baby-sitter's claim that Baby-sitting should not be called/ sitting. Because it is chasing, bending,/ picking up, and major play. Maher's attractive illustrations open each section. Despite a few uneven selections, Nye's talent is ever in evidence, especially with a trio of Wallace Stevensstyle meditations on a Little Chair and lines such as this one in Over the Weather: Creamy miles of quiet/ Giant swoop of blue. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Nye reports that she kept a journal during her 'tween years, maybe writing only three lines a day. Those jottings remind her now of what she observed and felt during those years when her body insisted on growing up while she clung to childhood. These 72 poems grow out of those long ago observations, reminding her and her readers to notice everything, to think about everything, to wonder about the world and how to establish peace around you and in you. These poems are full of daily wonders: silver spider trails, glum Mondays, the heart of a pumpkin the day after Halloween, the little chair in kindergarten where her body no longer fits. If girls could be encouraged to put down the cell phones and the Ipods and look away from television and movie screens and see the sky, the grass, the lives around them with similar wonder and respect, as both girls and women they would shape a better world. This small book is a good place to start. 2005, Greenwillow Books, 124 pp., Ages young adult.
—Myrna Dee Marler
In her newest book of poetry, Naomi Shihab Nye is totally apolitical as she identifies with the dreams and dreads and everyday hassles of adolescent girls. Short verses tantalize the mind with images that touch the soul and remind one just how much can be said with a few carefully chosen words: "Please, live with me in the open slope of a question mark . . . Don't answer it! Curl up in a comma that says more, and more, and more . . . " There are poems about siblings and boys, picking up your room and dealing with bad days. Girls will see their friends, their families, their schools in Nye's words. Boys may gain a better understanding of how girls think. "Walking slowly among tables, I balance my tray, glancing to the side. You're not here today. Are you sick? . . . Whatever the reason your absence is not excused by me." Nye's opening notes draw a connection between the "debris that is to be expected from the vibration of shipping" a holiday wreath and our own passage from one era into another when we feel as if "we are being shaken up, as if our contents are shifting and sifting into new alignments." Her poetry will prompt young readers in the midst of all that shifting to say "yessss — that's just the way it is!" A Maze Me addresses the puzzles of growing up with an amazing collection of words, uplifting, soul-searching, instructive without being pedantic, even suggestive of the kind of poetry young women could write about their own lives. 2005, Greenwillow Books, Ages 10 to 16.
—Karen Leggett
This charming collection allows young readers to realize that they and their world are probably complicated and amazing. Nye's introduction vividly describes her reluctant teen years and invites girls to write just three lines a day so that they can know who they are, remember what was significant to them, and discover the magic in life's small and simple details. The tiny volume is an excellent model for brief reflections. In five sections, Nye's poems explore universal feelings that each person experiences uniquely: about mind in "Big Head," emotions in "Secret Hum," the physical world in "Magical Geography," experiments and aspirations in "Sweet Dreams Please," and realizations or insights in "Something True." But her poems, as the poet herself, are not so easily classified and often explore all five aspects at once. She observes the rose, a vegetable truck, or shipping directions and snatches them for a poem, a surprise. Several, such as "Sifter" and "The Word Peace," are inspiring writing invitations for young poets and their writing teachers. Librarians will love "The List," Nye's reaction to a no-nonsense reading plan. Some poems, such as "If the Shoe Doesn't Fit," cross gender and are great discussion, bulletin board, or thought-for-the-day material. The book, appealing to women as well as girls, makes a wonderful intergenerational read and a very special gift to bind relationships. VOYA CODES: 5Q 4P M J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2005, HarperCollins, 128p., and PLB Ages 11 to 18.
—Lucy Schall
Gr 4-7-A lovely, rich collection that promises to be a lasting companion for young writers. In her introduction, Nye says: "If you write three lines down in a notebook every day-you will find out what you notice. Uncanny connections will be made visible to you. That's what I started learning when I was twelve, and I never stopped learning it." The more than 70 poems (nearly every one previously unpublished) are all over the map in terms of subject, but all are in Nye's unique voice: keenly detailed, empathetic, and humorous. Many of the selections focus on feelings particular to girls. Others are universal, such as "High Hopes": "Now that I know the truth,/that I only dreamed someone liked me,/the cat has curled up in a bed of leaves/against the house and I still have to do/everything I had to do before/without a secret hum/ inside." The small format, with bright and pastel-colored, two-page illustrations that introduce the sections, is clearly directed toward girls. The decision to narrow the audience like this is curious. Most of the poems could be appreciated by a wider readership, but it will be the rare boy who would pick up this book. Too bad-it's a keeper.-Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Nye begins her newest volume of 72 original poems with a wonderful, compact introduction in which she remembers her own "rough years of transition" and, like her beloved ceramics teacher, hopes to impart "faith about 'growing up.' " Writing for girls 12 and older, the author encourages her readers to "write three lines down in a notebook every day . . . you will find out what you notice," and these poems, one imagines, could have indeed started out as "scribbled details . . . crumbs to help me find my way back." They often deal with the everyday, smaller moments of childhood-a very large spider named Rose, the ring of a vegetable truck, a little chair, a flour sifter-through which quiet pings of meaning reverberate. Subtly, each of the five sections reflects the poet growing older; what she pays attention to changes and, with seeming simplicity, makes "uncanny connections" visible. From "Sifter": "When good days came / I would try to contain them gently / the way flour remains / in the sifter until you turn the handle." A gem. (index) (Poetry. YA)
