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general (see also headings under family)

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juvenile fiction / people & places / united states / african american

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juvenile fiction / poetry (see also stories in verse)

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people & places / united states / general

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social themes / general (see also headings under family)

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middle grade poetry collections; political poems; social justice; young activists; activism; young artists; social movement; educator; spoken-word; joy; passion; bright; emotional; call to justice; about discrimination; sel; empathy; acceptance speaking out; inspire; activism; race; poc; black; latinx; new york public library best books of the year; nypl best kids books of 2020; best books of 2020; school library journal best books of the year; slj best books of 2020

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middle grade poetry collections; political poems; social justice; young activists; activism; young artists; social movement; educator; spoken-word; joy; passion; bright; emotional; call to justice; about discrimination; sel; empathy; inspire; race; poc; black; latinx; acceptance speaking out; new york public library best books of the year; nypl best kids books of 2020; best books of 2020; school library journal best books of the year; slj best books of 2020

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juvenile fiction / people & places / united states / african american

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juvenile fiction / poetry (see also stories in verse)

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people & places / united states / general

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social themes / general (see also headings under family)

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Woke: A Young Poet's Call to Justice [Browne, Mahogany L., Acevedo, Elizabeth, Gatwood, Olivia, Taylor III, Theodore, Reynolds, Jason] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Woke: A Young Poet's Call to Justice

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Excerpt from Amanda Gorman's Coronavirus Poem

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Excerpt from Amanda Gorman's Coronavirus Poem

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Read children's books, dance alone to DJ music.
Know that this distance will make our hearts grow fonder.
From a wave of woes our world will emerge stronger.

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America's inaugural Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman is offering some inspiration during the coronavirus pandemic. In a performance for "CBS This Morning" at the Los Angeles Central Public Library, she used her voice to give comfort and courage to the nation.
Read her poem below.

So on this meaningful morn, we mourn and we mend.
Like light, we can't be broken, even when we bend.

Read children's books, dance alone to DJ music.
Know that this distance will make our hearts grow fonder.
From a wave of woes our world will emerge stronger.

We'll observe how the burdens braved by humankind
Are also the moments that make us humans kind;
Let every dawn find us courageous, brought closer;
Heeding the light before the fight is over.
When this ends, we'll smile sweetly, finally seeing
In testing times, we became the best of beings.

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Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman​ offers words of hope amid coronavirus pandemic

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America's inaugural Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman is offering some inspiration during the coronavirus pandemic. In a performance for "CBS This Morning" at the Los Angeles Central Public Library, she used her voice to give comfort and courage to the nation. Read her poem below.

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Native American Poems and Songs of Thanksgiving, told by Joseph Bruchac and pictures by Murv Jacob. This is a joyful collection of praise and thanksgiving songs and prayers from fourteen different Native American cultures. Joseph Bruchac is himself part Native American (Abenaki, from central New York state) and he has made a career of writing and storytelling drawing from a rich heritage. We have several of his books in our library and they are all excellent.

The fly leaf to Circle of Thanks tells us:

"The tradition of giving thanks is one that is deeply ingrained among the native peoples of North America. For Native Americans, every day is a day to give thanks, and the oral traditions of this continent are rich with songs and poems of thanksgiving."

The songs celebrate the earth our Mother, the plants that give us clothing and medicine as well as food, the wind, the stars and the people living in harmony. Here is one of my favorites, which I want to teach to my sons:

The Circle of Thanks

As I play my drum
I look around me
and I see the trees.
The trees are dancing
in a circle about me
and they are beautiful.

As I play my drum
I look around me
and I see the sun and moon.
The sun and moon are dancing
in a circle about me
and they are beautiful.

As I play my drum
I look around me
and I see the stars.
The stars are dancing
in a circle about me
and they are beautiful.

As I play my drum
I look around me
and I see my people.
All my people are dancing
in a circle about me
and my people, they are beautiful.

- Micmac, Northeast Coast

In this season when we celebrate giving thanks, so many school programs are focused on a folk history of the pilgrims that is a mixture of fact and fantasy. It is refreshing to read the true history written from an Indian's perspective, which is what we find in another of Bruchac's books titled Squanto's Journey . If you are looking for the real story of how the pilgrims survived you need to read this book and share it with the children in your life. My own young sons are getting a cloying diet of feather headdresses and hand print turkeys at their day care this fall. I am planning on gifting their teachers with these books to attempt to balance the scale some.

Squanto's Journey tells the story from the Native American perspective, which I find is rare in books for children. Squanto was a Patuxet born in 1590. He was kidnapped and taken to Spain against his will in 1614 and made a slave. He was able to escape slavery and made his way to England, where he learned the language and managed to make allies and procure a job that would take him by ship back to his homeland. Squanto found that all his people were killed by smallpox when he finally reached his home. His wife, children, parents and all his friends were dead. In spite of this he was a man of peace and worked to establish mutually beneficial relationships between the Indians of Nemasket the Pokanoket, and the Narragansett tribes. Massasoit, the sachem of the Pokanoket and Samoset, the sachem of the Pemaquid people came together with Squanto to befriend the English settlers. Squanto taught them how to plant and harvest the three sisters of corn, beans and squash, which kept the settlers alive. Their three day feast of the harvest in 1621 was in large part the result of Squanto's life work. In spite of the threat to himself, his people and his homeland he was a man of peace and he teaches us all the meaning of giving thanks. He is a hero in that he used his strength, intelligence, creativity and honor to reach out to his potential enemies and make a way of peace. This little book is a beautiful way to share the story with today's children. Check out this chat with Joseph Bruchac at Wordsmith in 2001, where he talks about poetry and children.

Today's Friday Poetry round up is at Big A, little a. Head on over and read some!

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Native American Poems and Songs of Thanksgiving, told by Joseph Bruchac and pictures by Murv Jacob. This is a joyful collection of praise and thanksgiving songs and prayers from fourteen different Native American cultures. Joseph Bruchac is himself part Native American (Abenaki, from central New York state) and he has made a career of writing and storytelling drawing from a rich heritage.

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See all the wonderful things Shanna Schwartz has made

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As I play my drum
I look around me
and I see the trees.
The trees are dancing
in a circle about me
and they are beautiful.

As I play my drum
I look around me
and I see the sun and moon.
The sun and moon are dancing
in a circle about me
and they are beautiful.

As I play my drum
I look around me
and I see the stars.
The stars are dancing
in a circle about me
and they are beautiful.

As I play my drum
I look around me
and I see my people.
All my people are dancing
in a circle about me
and my people, they are beautiful.

- Micmac, Northeast Coast

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Search Classroom Resources | PBS LearningMedia

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Find classroom resources for teachers and students. Search for videos, lesson plans, and games aligned to state and national standards.

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Poets and writers! Morning Edition listeners and NPR lovers! This group is a place to come together to share your work, writing tips and recommendations. We will also keep everyone up to date on...

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Now more than ever we are looking for ways to feel less alone - and poetry can be one way to bring people together.

Last month NPR asked listeners to respond to art with a poem - a style of poetry called ekphrastic. For inspiration, Kwame Alexander, NPR's poet in residence, selected two paintings: Kadir Nelson's Heatwave and Salvador Dali's Young Woman At A Window. Both show women inside looking longingly out into the world.

The paintings struck a chord with those experiencing the global coronavirus pandemic quarantined inside. We received more than 1,300 submissions.

Alexander took lines and excerpts from some of the submissions and created a crowdsourced, community poem of hope. Contributors are credited at the bottom.
Social Distance
Summer bears down on the city
like granny's old quilt

The Fantastical Queen
Her Crown of wrapped locks
The jewels in her melanin Sparkle
her body slick in Brooklyn's summer
oiled mahogany

From her window she holds court
She reigns where dogs interact with rainbows
For her, plants bow their head down low.
Hottest Thang In Town
Stuck inside all day.

She opens all the windows,
her imagination of freedom
something to hold onto.

Only half there
her mind is far off
Across the world.

kayaking quietly
gazing at glaciers
watching waves dance
a boat out to sea

The sea breeze blowing
against her loneliness
Perched up in the hills
Overlooking a world of fraud
Soul ready to sail away

You see, smart women bend
like stems grabbing at the light
muscles coat limbs
as eyelids stalk the horizon
to calculate what comes next
drought or a wall of water
high cheekbones not afraid to climb out
or crawl up.

It is the same horizon no matter the color.
The same sun.

Shouting streets stilled
people's voices wilted like plants.
no dinner with friends.

The sea is forever capricious
A mercurial creature with fickle temperament
The gentle blue of harbor water hides
its ferocity Like a wolf in sheepskin

But, she will not wilt.

She sees herself
in the sky.
in the muddied turquoise of the curtain
In the warm turquoise of the window frame
in the gentle peace that shall not last.

She is not thinking about the next time
they will see each other
She is not thinking about the last time
they saw each other
She is not thinking about the empty grocery shelves
She is not thinking about the furrowed frowning eyebrows
She is not thinking about the word quarantine
and why it sounds so social
She is not thinking about the way her lungs
hold onto air like making love to molecules
She is not thinking about the grandmother
and grandfather in Apt 2c
She is not thinking about whether clouds are aware
of their silly shapes and feel self-conscious
She is not thinking about whether the butter will last

At the window, she considers that
She is not who she was,
and she is not who she will be.
She is transforming.
She will be strong and resilient.
She will be honest with herself and those she loves.
She will have stories to tell And when she does
They will no longer shake her voice.

This community poem was created using submissions by:

Becky Boling, Northfield, Minn.

Thu Nguyen, Washington, D.C.

Tehmina Khan, San Francisco

Daniela Larsson, Litchfield, Ct.

Myer Schmitz, Champlin, Minn.

Katrina Kiss, Oswego, Ill.

Lisa Sarasohn, Asheville, N.C.

Deborah Meltvedt, Sacramento, Calif.

Danielle Evennou, Washington, D.C.

Maggie Chism, Mich.

Katherine Shafer, Ypsilanti, Mich.

Kevin Cheb, Ellicott City, Md.

Sheba Montserrat, London

Lorian Tompkins, Clinton Township, Mich.

Keyan Kaplan, East Setauket, N.Y.

Abel Koury, Columbus, Ohio

Charles Sharpe, Bainbridge Island, Wash.

Josh Lawrence, Portland, Ore.

Rachael Vella-Garrido, Buffalo, N.Y.

Sarah Teague, Carbondale, Colo.

Jeevika Verma and Reena Advani produced and edited this story for broadcast. Casey Noenickx adapted it for the Web.

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'Social Distance': A Community-Style Poem To Help You Feel Less Isolated

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Now more than ever we are looking for ways to feel less alone - and poetry can be one way to bring people together. Last month NPR asked listeners to respond to art with a poem - a style of poetry called ekphrastic.

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Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

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Onion,luminous flask,your beauty formedpetal by petal,crystal scales expanded youand in the secrecy of the dark earthyour belly grew round with dew.Under the earththe miraclehappenedand when your clumsygreen stem appeared,and your leaves were bornlike swordsin the garden,the earth heaped up her powershowing your naked transparency,and as the remote seain lifting the breasts of Aphroditeduplicating the magnolia,so did the earthmake you,onionclear as a planetand destinedto shine,constant constellation,round rose of water,uponthe tableof the poor.

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With the New Year comes new promises, new goals and new rules. There are the inevitable promises to eat better, go to the gym, be more organized, read more books and save more money.

But some rules are destined to be broken.

At the start of 2020, we asked you to send us couplets of your abandoned New Year's resolutions. We collected more than 500 entries, and Kwame Alexander, NPR's poet-in-residence, combined some of these lines into an epic (and guilt-free) community poem.

Ode To The Things I'll Get To Tomorrow

Here's to my treadmill, incomplete
without the sound of slapping feet.

Eating healthy, getting abs
But chips and chocolate up for grabs

Oh, banana pudding from the deli
How did you get inside my belly?

I was a vegetarian
All the way to 10 AM

My goals quickly turned to apathy
At least I eat happily

People acting all highfalutin
'Cause they said they've sworn off gluten

Why do my resolutions fail?
Why can't I just eat that kale?

What makes me want to poke my fork
Into that plate of spiced pulled pork.

Why do I shun vegan potpourri,
After I resolve to go fat free.

I think I shall, come next new year,
Vow no more pizza, no more beer.

Then perhaps I might instead,
Choose green tea and pita bread.

To the pounds I vow each year to lose,
Each time a few more from which to choose.

To stop feeding my Krispy Kreme addiction.
To watch less news. Read more fiction.

To the running shoes gathering dust by the back door.
To the unfinished dissertation I habitually ignore.

To all the papers I did not grade,
To all the beds I never made.

Though I promised to timely fold,
Laundry in the dryer lays there cold.

I resolve to not procrastinate.
I'll start tomorrow. Is that too late?

Junk mail towers, a teetering stack.
The will to sort it I clearly lack.

New resume, that's what I want!
Alas, can't find the perfect font.

O! Sweet tenor ukulele, last year's Holiday treasure
You filled my heart with Sunshine songs, in spite of ill wind weather

A year gone by, on wistful sigh, no lessons and no learning
A lifetime worth of unsung Soul, such longing and such yearning

Every year I vow to change the world before I die.
Every year the world changes and I didn't even try

Every year, since giving birth I vow, "no longer will I curse."
But dammit, I'm a parent!

From all the speeding I do that is not legal,
To the sister-in-law I still love to needle

I resolved to be ever so nice and kind
On January 2nd I changed my mind.

Promised myself I would write this couplet.
Sorry to say, it just isn't done yet.

Sure, my 2020 goals are going just fine -
I'd get'em all done....if I could just find the time.

The long walks I promised to my dog.
The men at bars I would not snog.

Long morning runs in lifting fog.
Calorie counting in this food log.

Candidates for office I should uplift
With walks and calls and poll place shifts

Grocery shopping with more thrift
The long lost friends, your misplaced gifts

Bills, please pay yourself on time!
To all of you I send these rhymes.

Worry not, I have a notion:
I can fix this with a potion

Gather the coals, the cauldron set
Add in three fresh drops of sweat

A chicken egg not yet hatched
Prescription pills finally fetched

Sprig of flowers not yet bloomed
More home cooking fills the room

And lastly here, the secret seed
That dead goldfish I didn't feed

I free you from your frozen disposition
The uncleaned refrigerator in my kitchen

And one day soon I'll drink this stout
After I take my sweet dog out.

This community poem was created using submissions by:

Chloe Allison, Chesapeake, Va.

Sheri Cox, Tallahassee, Fla.

Rosemary Randolph, Norfolk, Va.

Matt Sanders, St. Louis Park, Minn.

Gage Bausman, Austin, Texas

Dale Chapman, Lexington, Ky.

Joshua Davis, Mill Valley, Calif.

Robyn Michalove Ft. Worth, Texas

Mea Knapp, Northport, N.Y.

Richard Latimer, Falmouth, Mass.

Lorena Masterson, Kalamazoo, Mich.

Gigi Salij, Venice, Calif.

Marjori Hallett, Harrison Township, Mich.

Kumar, Newton, Mass.

Angela Grossman, Austin, Texas

Maura Harrigan, Acton, Mass.

Alyson Heimer, Hamden, Conn.

Jonathan Culler, Lexington, Ky.

Steve Rodgers, Knoxville, Tenn.

Kimberley Peabody, Blytheville, Ark.

Cathy Gilbert, Carrollton, Ky.

Karen R., Talent, Ore.

Jessica Mazzenga, London, England
Lisa Weiner and Ashley Westerman produced and edited this story for broadcast, with contributions by Reena Advani and Casey Noenickx. Heidi Glenn adapted it for the Web.

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A Poem For Those Who Dropped The Ball On New Year's Resolutions

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With the New Year comes new promises, new goals and new rules. There are the inevitable promises to eat better, go to the gym, be more organized, read more books and save more money. But some rules are destined to be broken.

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Children's author Eloise Greenfield was born in Parmele, North Carolina, and raised in Washington, DC. She attended Miner Teachers' College (now the University of the District of Columbia) and went on to work as a clerk in the US Patent Office. The monotony of the job drove her to experiment with making up rhymes, and eventually Greenfield began writing poetry in earnest. Her first published poem appeared in the Hartford Times in 1962. Since then, Greenfield has published more than 40 books for children, including works of poetry, biography, picture books, and chapter books. Her work is widely praised for its depiction of African American experience, particularly family life; Greenfield has said she began writing for children after looking in vain for books for her own children that reflected their life.

As a member of the DC Black Writer's Workshop, Greenfield wrote her first biography. Rosa Parks (1973, reissued 1995) won the first Carter G. Woodson Book Award from the National Council for the Social Studies. Greenfield's first collection of poetry for children, Honey, I Love and Other Love Poems (1978; reissued 1990, 2003), won the Recognition of Merit Award from the George G. Stone Center for Children's Books. Her other works include Africa Dream (1977, illustrated by Carole M. Byard), which won a Coretta Scott King Award; Childtimes: A Three Generation Memoir (1993) that Greenfield wrote with her mother, Lessie Jones Little, which won a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor Award; For the Love of the Game: Michael Jordan and Me (1997, illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist); and The Great Migration: Journey to the North (2011), a collection of poems that won a Coretta Scott King Author Honor and was an ALA Notable Children's Book.

Greenfield's many honors and awards include a Living Legacy Award from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, a Hope S. Dean Award from the Foundation for Children's Literature, an NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, a Hurston/Wright Foundation North Star Award for lifetime achievement, and a lifetime achievement award from the Moonstone Celebration of Black Writing. Greenfield has been inducted into the National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. She lives in Washington, DC.

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Children's author Eloise Greenfield was born in Parmele, North Carolina, and raised in Washington, DC. She attended Miner Teachers' College (now the University of the District of Columbia) and went on to work as a clerk in the US Patent Office. The monotony of the job drove her to experiment with...

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Creatures of Earth, Sea, and Sky book. Read 5 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Creatures of land, water, and sky are featured here...

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In this book, the students in Mrs. Merz's 6th grade class decide to find out. They write apology poems about dodgeball accidents, broken windows, crushes, and lost pets. Then they boldly ask for responses to their poems. Join these characters as they find out what it truly takes to apologize--and to forgive. This book has been adapted into a for schools. It also makes an excellent Reader's Theater script. I teaching writing residencies in local schools and I often use W.C. Williams' poem "This Is Just to Say" as a model. One year, I showed a group of 4th graders a poem I wrote to my mother, apologizing for breaking a glass deer (yes, it was me). One boy looked me in the eye. "Well," he said, "are you going to send it to her?" After a little hemming and hawing, I did, and she wrote me back a lovely letter confessing how she'd felt all those years ago. That made me think a lot about apology and forgiveness. What if all those sorry poems were actually sent to the people they were written to? And what if those people wrote back? One day, as I sat down to write, a group of students stepped forth from my imagination to utter their apologies, one by one. Joyce reads a poem Claudia Lewis Poetry Award Cybils Poetry Award Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book School Library Journal Best Book of the Year IRA Teacher's Choice Book New York Public Library's "100 Titles for Reading and Sharing" Book Links Lasting Connection Book
"Sidman's ear is keen, capturing many voices. Her skill as a poet accessible to young people is unmatched . . . This is an important book both for its creativity and for its wisdom."

"The concept for Sidman's book is original and entertaining, using a fictional classroom to bring a group of poems and their elementary school authors to life . . . a fabulous book to show students the many forms that poetry can take and to inspire them to write their own 'sorry' poems."

" . . . this series of poems was inspired by William Carlos Williams's famous poem of the same title regarding a theft of plums. . . . Packed with the intensity of everyday pain and sorrow, kids and adults exchange the words that convey grief, delight, love and acceptance of themselves and others."

"This often humorous and touching anthology . . . successfully navigate[s] the complicated terrain for those who seek forgiveness."

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In this book, the students in Mrs. Merz's 6th grade class decide to find out. They write apology poems about dodgeball accidents, broken windows, crushes, and lost pets. Then they boldly ask for responses to their poems. Join these characters as they find out what it truly takes to apologize--and to forgive.

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Book Details

Musician, botanist, baseball player, pilot-the Latinos featured in this collection, Bravo!, come from many different countries and from many different backgrounds. Celebrate their accomplishments and their contributions to a collective history and a community that continues to evolve and thrive today!

Biographical poems include: Aida de Acosta, Arnold Rojas, Baruj Benacerraf, César Chávez, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, Félix Varela, George Meléndez, José Martí, Juan de Miralles, Juana Briones, Julia de Burgos, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Paulina Pedroso, Pura Belpré, Roberto Clemente, Tito Puente, Ynes Mexia, Tomás Rivera

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Musician, botanist, baseball player, pilot-the Latinos featured in this collection, Bravo!, come from many different countries and from many different backgrounds. Celebrate their accomplishments and their contributions to a collective history and a community that continues to evolve and thrive today!

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SKU:

9784805315156

Publisher:

Tuttle Publishing

ISBN:

9784805315156

Format:

Hardcover, Jacketed

Date Published:

03/12/2019

Illustrations:

20 poems in bilingual Japanese and English text; watercolor illustrations

Number of Pages:

48

Trim Size:

10 X 10

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SKU: 9784805315156 Publisher: Tuttle Publishing ISBN: 9784805315156 Format: Hardcover, Jacketed Date Published: 03/12/2019 Illustrations: 20 poems in bilingual Japanese and English text; watercolor illustrations Number of Pages: 48 Trim Size: 10 X 10

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Adoff, Arnold. Touch the Poem. (2000). Target Audience: 4-9 years old. This children's poetry anthology draws readers in with it's unique presentation of poems. All the poems reflect the book's title as each one is about senses, more specifically, touch. Some poems describe touch of fingers and toes, others the sensation of feeling the stubble of a daddy's cheek and the pull of his rough beard or the fuzz of a peach on one's upper lip. A reader's own back might begin to itch as he reads about ...more

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Adoff, Arnold. Touch the Poem. (2000). Target Audience: 4-9 years old. This children's poetry anthology draws readers in with it's unique presentation of poems. All the poems reflect the book's title as each one is about senses, more specifically, touch.

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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 Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Carity Randall Prize, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and many Pushcart Prizes. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was a Witter Bynner Fellow. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018 she was awarded the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. Nye was the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate from 2019-2022.

Nye's experience of both cultural difference and different cultures has influenced much of her work. Known for poetry that lends a fresh perspective to ordinary events, people, and objects, Nye has said that, for her, "the primary source of poetry has always been local life, random characters met on the streets, our own ancestry sifting down to us through small essential daily tasks." In her work, according to Jane Tanner in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Nye observes the business of living and the continuity among all the world's inhabitants ... She is international in scope and internal in focus." Nye is also considered one of the leading female poets of the American Southwest. A contributor to Contemporary Poets wrote that she "brings attention to the female as a humorous, wry creature with brisk, hard intelligence and a sense of personal freedom unheard of" in the history of pioneer women.

Nye continues to live and work in San Antonio, Texas. "My poems and stories often begin with the voices of our neighbors, mostly Mexican American, always inventive and surprising," Nye wrote for Four Winds Press. "I never get tired of mixtures." A contributor to Contemporary Southern Writers wrote that Nye's poetry "is playfully and imaginatively instructive, borrows from Eastern and Middle Eastern and Native American religions, and resembles the meditative poetry of William Stafford, Wallace Stevens, and Gary Snyder." Nye's first two chapbooks were published in the 1970s. Both Tattooed Feet (1977) and Eye-to-Eye (1978) are written in free verse and structured around the theme of a journey or quest. They announced Nye as a "wandering poet," one interested in travel, place, and cultural exchange. In her first full-length collection, Different Ways to Pray (1980), Nye explores the differences between, and shared experiences of, cultures from California to Texas, from South America to Mexico. In "Grandfather's Heaven," a child declares: "Grandma liked me even though my daddy was a Moslem." As Tanner observed, "with her acceptance of different 'ways to pray' is also Nye's growing awareness that living in the world can sometimes be difficult."

Nye's next books include On the Edge of the Sky (1981), Hugging the Jukebox (1982), a full-length collection that also won the Voertman Poetry Prize, and Yellow Glove (1986). In Hugging the Jukebox, Nye emphasized the ordinary connections between diverse peoples and the perspectives of those in other lands. She writes: "We move forward, / confident we were born into a large family, / our brothers cover the earth." Reviewers praised the book, noting Nye's warmth and celebratory tone. Writing in the Village Voice, Mary Logue commented that in Nye's poems about daily life, "Nye often pulls gold from the ordinary." The poems in Yellow Glove presented a perspective tempered by tragedy and sorrow. In " Blood" Nye considers the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. She describes a café in combat-weary Beirut, bemoans "a world where no one saves anyone," and observes "The Gardener" for whom "everything she planted gave up under the ground." Georgia Review contributor Philip Booth declared that Nye brings "home to readers both how variously and how similarly all people live." In Red Suitcase (1994), Nye continued to explore the effect of on-going violence on everyday life in the Middle East. Writing for Booklist, Pat Monaghan explained that "some of her most powerful poems deal with her native land's continuing search for peace and the echoes of that search that resound in an individual life. Nye is a fluid poet, and her poems are also full of the urgency of spoken language. Her direct, unadorned vocabulary serves her well: 'A boy filled a bottle with water. / He let it sit. / Three days later it held the power / of three days.' Such directness has its own mystery, its own depth and power, which Nye exploits to great effect."

Nye's next book, Fuel (1998), received wide acclaim. The poems range over a variety of subjects, settings and scenes. Reviewing the book for Ploughshares, Victoria Clausi regarded it as, above all, an attempt at connection: "Nye's best poems often act as conduits between opposing or distant forces. Yet these are not didactic poems that lead to forced epiphanic moments. Rather, the carefully crafted connections offer bridges on which readers might find their own stable footing, enabling them to peek over the railings at the lush scenery." Like her mentor, William Stafford, Nye again and again manifests her "belief in the value of the overlooked, the half-forgotten," wrote Clausi, as well as investigating global concerns like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A reviewer for Publisher's Weekly found that "Nye's witnessings of everyday life and strife never quite acquire collective force, yet they convey a delicate sense of moral concern and a necessary sense of urgency."

After the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, Nye became an active voice for Arab Americans, speaking out against both terrorism and prejudice. The lack of understanding between Americans and Arabs led her to collect poems she had written which dealt with the Middle East and her experiences as an Arab American into one volume. 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002) was a finalist for the National Book Award. Publisher's Weekly declared that it was "an excellent way to invite exploration and discussion of events far away and their impact here at home." Nye's next book, You and Yours (2005), continued to explore the Middle East and the possibilities of poetic response. Divided into two sections, the first deals with Nye's personal experiences as a mother and traveler and intersperses Nye's typical free-verse with prose poems. Part two examines the Middle East with "indignity and compassion," according to Publisher's Weekly. Donna Seaman wrote that the book is "tender yet forceful, funny and commonsensical, reflective and empathic," adding, "Nye writes radiant poems of nature and piercing poems of war, always touching base with homey details and radiant portraits of family and neighbors. Nye's clarion condemnation of prejudice and injustice reminds readers that most Americans have ties to other lands and that all concerns truly are universal." The book received the Isabel Gardner Poetry Award. Nye's recent collections of poetry include Transfer (2011), Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018), and The Tiny Journalist (2019).

In addition to poetry, Nye has written fiction for children, poetry and song recordings, and poetry translations. She has also published a book of essays, Never in a Hurry (1996), and edited several anthologies, including the award-winning This Same Sky (1992), which represents 129 poets from sixty-eight countries. In her introduction to the anthology Nye writes, "Whenever someone suggests 'how much is lost in translation!' I want to say, 'Perhaps-but how much is gained!'" Booklist critic Hazel Rochman called it "an extraordinary anthology, not only in its global range ... but also in the quality of the selections and the immediacy of their appeal." Nye also compiled and edited a bilingual anthology of Mexican poetry, The Tree Is Older Than You Are (1995),and she edited the collection I Feel a Little Jumpy around You (1996), which combines 194 "his and her" poems, pairing a poem written by a man with one written by a woman. Nye's anthology The Space between Our Footsteps (1998) is a collection of the work of 127 contemporary Middle Eastern poets and artists representing nineteen countries.

As a children's writer, Nye is acclaimed for her sensitivity and cultural awareness. Her book Sitti's Secrets (1994) concerns an Arab American child's relationship with her sitti-Arabic for grandmother-who lives in a Palestinian village. Booklist praised Nye for capturing the emotions of the "child who longs for a distant grandparent" as well as for writing a narrative that deals personally with Arabs and Arab Americans. In 1997 Nye published Habibi, her first young-adult novel. Readers meet Liyana Abboud, an Arab American teen who moves with her family to her Palestinian father's native country during the 1970s, only to discover that the violence in Jerusalem has not yet abated. As Liyana notes, "in Jerusalem, so much old anger floated around ... [that] the air felt stacked with weeping and raging and praying to God by all the different names." Autobiographical in its focus, Habibi was praised by Karen Leggett, who noted in the New York Times Book Review that the novel magnifies through the lens of adolescence "the joys and anxieties of growing up" and that Nye is "meticulously sensitive to this rainbow of emotion." Nye sees her writing for children as part of her larger goals as a writer. As Nye explained to a Children's Literature Review contributor, "to counteract negative images conveyed by blazing headlines, writers must steadily transmit simple stories closer to heart and more common to everyday life. Then we will be doing our job." Nye has since published poetry for young adults, including Come With Me: Poems for a Journey (2000) and A Maze Me: Poems for Girls (2005). Nye has received many awards for her writing for children, including the NSK Neustadt Award for Children's Literature and the 2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award from the American Library Association.

Nye has been affiliated with the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and poetry editor for the Texas Observer for over 20 years. She is a professor of creative writing at Texas State University. Nye told Contemporary Authors: "I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late-there's that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantime ... Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own."

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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 Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of...

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In Daddy's Arms I Am Tall book. Read 82 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. In this intergenerational collection of poetry by new and...

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Viral Poem Describes Living Through The Coronavirus Pandemic

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Viral Poem Describes Living Through The Coronavirus Pandemic

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Viral Poem Describes Living Through The Coronavirus Pandemic | NowThis

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Turner Elementary School performs at 2016 Poetry Slam!