A Maze Me: Poems for Girls [Hardcover]

Naomi Shihab Nye (Author), Terre Maher (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2005

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Gr. 8-11. In the thoughtful, inspiring introduction to her latest collection of original poems, Nye encourages young readers to write three lines in a notebook every day: "You will find out what you notice. Uncanny connections will be made visible to you." The following poems draw from Nye's observations about nature, home, school, and neighborhood to make connections to a girl's inner world. The meaning in a few selections is oblique, particularly in spare lines that read like a zen koan. Most poems, though, speak with a powerful immediacy. When the speaker finds her mother's braid in an attic, there is the sharp, lonely realization that her parents will die: "I don't want to be / eighty years old / looking at the braid / all by myself." In other poems, she worries if a crush notices her, but there is a strong, contagious confidence in her voice: "Does he see me gleaming / in my chair?" In beautiful lines, the speaker's hopes extend to the wider world, and she wishes that, like tree frogs, humans had "something / we could / all sing / together, yes." A wide age range will respond to these deeply felt poems about everyday experiences that encourage readers to lean eagerly into their lives and delight in their passages. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Naomi Shihab Nye has received a Lannan Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and four Pushcart Prizes. Her collection 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her collection Honeybee was awarded the Arab-American Book Award. She is currently serving on the Board of Chancellors for the Academy of American Poets. Naomi Shihab Nye has edited several honored and popular poetry anthologies, including Time You Let Me In, What Have You Lost?, Salting the Ocean, and This Same Sky, and she is the author of the novels Habibi and Going, Going. She lives with her family in San Antonio, Texas.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 13 and up
  
• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books; First Edition edition (March 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060581891
• ISBN-13: 978-0060581893
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #262,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #92 in Books > Teens > Education & Reference > Social Science

More About the Author

Naomi Shihab Nye, poet, essayist, anthologist, has been a recipient of writing fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Witter Bynner Foundation/Library of Congress. Author of more than twenty volumes, her recent books inc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: A Maze Me, April 28, 2005

By 

Richie Partington "Richie's Picks" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Maze Me: Poems for Girls (Hardcover)

"Ringing


A baby, I stood in my crib to hear
the dingy-ding of a vegetable truck approaching.

When I was bigger, my mom took me out
to the street
to meet the man who rang the bell and
he tossed me
a tangerine...

...the first thing I ever caught. I thought
he was
a magic man.

My mom said there used to be milk trucks too.
She said,
Look hard, he'll be gone soon. And she was right.
He disappeared.

Now when I hear an ice-cream truck chiming
its bells, I fly.
Even if I'm not hungry--just to watch it pass.

Mailmen with their chime of dogs barking
up and down the street are magic too.

They are all bringers.

I want to be a bringer.

I want to drive a truck full of eggplants down
the smallest street.

I want to be someone making music
with my coming."

And so she is. And so she does.
A great joy that accompanies a new book of poems by Naomi Shihab Nye is the expectation that she will begin reappearing at national conferences and conventions, reading aloud from her latest collection. The good feeling I've taken away with me from her past workshops is about as close as I get to church these days.

A MAZE ME contains seventy-two of Naomi's latest poems. Younger teens will find these pieces easy to read and relate to. Hopefully, many will be intrigued and inspired by Naomi's ability to create poetry from such sources as a car manual, a newspaper article, a taco sign, "the hair on the head of the girl in front of me in school," Julia Child's patting potatoes, or a vapor trail "X" that a pair of planes have inadvertently left in the sky.

Being a book of "Poems for Girls" there are also the requisite handful of "longing" poems:

"High Hopes


It wasn't that they were so
high, exactly,
they were more
low-down,
close-to-the-ground,
I could rub them
the way you touch a cat
that rubs against your ankles
even if he isn't yours.

So yes I feel lonely without them.
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."

Despite being a guy, I really enjoyed the images and memories conjured up by these poems. Whether reading "Visiting My Old Kindergarten Teacher, Last Day of School," "Turtle" (about the persistent creature that had walked for twenty years), or "Across the Aisle" (about the little girl who coughed "every 30 seconds for seven whole hours" on a transatlantic flight), I've repeatedly interrupted Rosemary's reading on the couch and Shari's grading papers at the kitchen table in order to have an audience with whom to share the poems aloud.
"Big Head, Big Face
(what my brother said to me)


If your head had been smaller
maybe you woulda had less thoughts in it,
maybe you wouldn't have so many troubles.
This is just a guess but seems to me
like a little drawer only hold a few spoons
and you can always find the one you need
while a big drawer jammed with tongs
strings corks junky stuff receipts birthday cards
you never gonna look at
scrambled and mixed so one day
you open that drawer
poke your hand in and big knife go
through your palm
you didn't even know a knife was IN there,
well, that's why I think
it might not be so bad to have a little head
with just a few thoughts few memories few hopes
maybe if only one little one came true
that be enough for you."

Luckily for us, Naomi Shihab Nye has carefully sifted through that drawer to provide an entertaining assortment of poetic images, thoughts, stories, and yoga poses.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Color Me Amazed, June 26, 2006

By 

Bart King (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Maze Me: Poems for Girls (Hardcover)

This book by the sublime Naomi Shihab Nye is subtitled "Poems for Girls," but I don't think that this charming book should be restricted to one gender. I certainly chuckled, oohed, and aahed a number of times as I read through it. (Still, it WOULD make a great gift for the young girl in your life.)

Shihab Nye has a generosity of spirit that shines through her poetry like a twinkle in a kindly aunt's eye. Here is a little somethin'-somethin' to whet your appetite (excerpted from "Ringing"):

"Now, when I hear an ice-cream truck chiming its bells, I fly
Even if I'm not hungry -- just to watch it pass.

Mailmen with their chime of dogs barking
up and down the street are magic too.

They are all bringers.
I want to be a bringer.

I want to drive a truck full of eggplants down the smallest street. I want to be someone making music with my coming."

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Poet in All of Us, May 23, 2006

By 

R. Thornton "Becca Babe" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Maze Me: Poems for Girls (Hardcover)

Once I read Naomi Shihab Nye's introduction, I felt I was about to turn the pages of something very special. I was right. This unique collection of poems gives the reader a chance to look at familiar life in a new way. Full of nostalgia, intimate and humorous, tender and tearful, this is a book I would love to underline and memorize. I look forward to writing in my own notebook, trying to find the poet in me.