Come with Me

Nye, Naomi Shihab

ISBN 10: 0688159478 ISBN 13: 9780688159474

Publisher: Greenwillow, 2000

Synopsis

A humorous, beguiling, and thought-provoking collection of sixteen poems includes "Secrets," "When You Come to a Corner," "Mad," "Come With Me," and others which celebrate journeys of all kinds, both real and imagined. Jr Lib Guild.

About this title

Review

Come with me
To the quiet minute between two noisy minutes
It's always waiting ready to welcome us
Tucked under the wing of the day
I'll be there
Where will you be?

A journey with Naomi Shihab Nye and Dan Yaccarino is impossible to resist. Sixteen luminous poems by Nye are accompanied by Yaccarino's stunning mixed-media collages. Nye, poet, novelist, essayist, and anthologist, writes of journeys--internal and external, short and long, slow and fast. Her poetry invites readers to sail away, to rejoice in the journey as well as the destination, and to notice everything along the way. Yaccarino, award-winning artist, and illustrator of Circle Dogs, Deep in the Jungle, An Octopus Followed Me Home, and others, crafts unusual and compelling collages to lose oneself in. His rich use of color, texture, and pattern complements Nye's deeply layered, absorbing poems. This is a collection to cherish. (Ages 4 and older) --Emilie Coulter

About the Author

In Her Own Words...

Since my books have been some of my best friends all my life, being involved in the making of books is the luckiest, happiest thing I can imagine.

The day Virginia Duncan, my editor for many years now, wrote me her first note stands among my most shining days. She had read some of my poems and asked if I had thought of writing children's books. This is what I tell young writers: when you send your poems out into the world, you have no idea what friends they might find. Thank you, Virginia.

As a child I read all the time. I got lost and found in books, and still do. They are my refuge, escape, my endless journey. (At this moment I have fourteen books on my bedside table and forty-eight books stacked on my dresser.)

I was also fascinated by my mother's small red diary that she had kept as a girl. Her penmanship was exquisitely and perfectly slanted, a talent I did not inherit. She rarely wrote more than "Saw movie. Got new dress." I wanted to know more details. What color was the dress? I would beg, during our steamy afternoons as she peeled peaches for cobbler and I lay on the floor thumbing through her early life. "I have no idea!" she'd exclaim. "You think I can remember everything?"

I started keeping my own notebooks because I wanted to remember everything. The quilt, the cherry tree, the creek. The neat whop of a baseball rammed perfectly with a bat. My father's funny Palestinian stories. The feeling of breeze as my brother and I rode our bicycles down the hill. The blood-red stain of a ripe strawberry on my fingertips; the rich smell of earth at Mueller's Organic Farm a few blocks from our house.

How lucky we were to have a farm in our neighborhood! My first job was picking berries. I thought about poems as I meandered among damp rows. Thirty-four summers later my photographer- husband, Michael, our son, Madison, and I went to pick berries there again, same farm, same fields, same farmers. Suddenly everything in my life connected.

Familiar sights, sounds, smells have always been my necessities. Let someone else think about future goals and professional lives! I will keep track of the bucket and the hoe, billowing leaves, and the clouds drifting in from the horizon.

Whenever someone asks why I write about "ordinary things," I wonder, "Well, what do you have in YOUR life?" Writing saved me when my family moved to Jerusalem, my father's hometown, and during my years at Trinity University in Texas. I have spent twenty-five years working as a visiting writer with students of all ages. I write essays as well as poems, children's books and songs as well as novels and stories for teens. Material is everywhere, free as air.

Now my husband, son, and I live in a house nearly a hundred years old, a block from the little river, in downtown San Antonio. We have a large wrap-around front porch with a swing, good to read in. The most important thing to me about any room is: how are the reading lamps? The new basketball court in our backyard was finished the same week our terrific Spurs team won the 1999 NBA Championship. Sometimes things fit together! Reading and writing help us see all the many ways this is true.

About this edition

• Publisher: Greenwillow
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0688159478
• ISBN 13: 9780688159474
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 40
• Illustrator: Yaccarino Dan