Module 2: Poetry Book Review: Naomi Shihab Nye (Multicultural)

A Maze Me

Poems For Girls

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Illustrated by Terre Maher

Naomi Shihab Nye, is an American, an Arab, a Poet, a parent, a woman of Texas, a woman of ideas. The daughter of a Palestinian father and an American mother, she's lived in old Jerusalem, in St. Louis, and now with her own family in San Antonio, Texas.

Naomi Shihab Nye provides insight into her childhood in her Introduction at the beginning of A Maze Me. She reflects on her desires to stay a twelve years old and the frustration of having to grow up. She encourages tweeners to write three lines down in a notebook every day and to reflect upon those thoughts in order to identify uncanny connections.

Nye provides the reader with over 70 poems that speak to females from age 11 to 99. Many poems in this collection provide imagery and life application lessons. In the poem "The Bucket", a little girl who frolics by the sea offers a lesson in the simplicity of a child's life. "I Said to Dana's Mother" provides insight into a teenagers yearning for adulthood. Dana's Mother quickly and succinctly states, "Missy", she said (not my name), "you'll never be as free as you are now." Teenage angst is found "In the School Cafeteria" ("You're not here today. Are you sick? Why are you absent? And why, among all these faces, is there only one I want to see?") and in "Where He Is" ("Because I knew the boy I haven't met yet is here too, somewhere close by, and I knew he was looking up. I could feel him looking."). Nye provides young women with poetry that can be referred to during the formative years of adulthood in a way that they can relate to. This poetry book is a must for any female coming of age.

Life is a tangle of

twisting paths.

Some short.

Some long.

There are dead ends.

And there are choices.

And wrong turns,

and detours,

and yield signs,

and instruction booklets,

and star maps,

and happiness,

and loneliness.

And friends.

And sisters.

And love.

And poetry.

Life is a maze.

You are a maze.

Amazed.

And amazing.

Nye, Naomi Shihab. 2005. A Maze Me. Greenwillow Books.

School Library Journal Best Book
ALA Notable Children’s Book
Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award

Photo Courtesy of http://www.alibris.com/ and Michael Nye.