Cast Away: Poems for Our Time by Naomi Shihab Nye My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve always appreciated poetry as an art form and when I had to study them in class it was a nice change of pace from fiction. It’s interesting to see how different poets use words to create images and feelings that break the rules of standard grammar and syntax. Sometimes a poem, without all the rules, just hits harder than a book covering the same topic. I have my […]

The Tiny Journalist by Naomi Shihab Nye My rating: 3 of 5 stars This collections of poems is centered on the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, specifically the coverage of Israeli violence in the West Bank as recorded by a young woman, Janna, on her phone and on social media. She’s the titular young journalist. The other poems that fill out this collection are the poets thoughts on the invasion of Iraq. While both of these topics take place in the Middle East, I did […]

Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose by Naomi Shihab Nye My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve only read a few collections of poetry and this is one of the few I really liked. I rarely read poetry and when I do it’s usually individual poems and something I’m teaching. However, just like I tell my students, it’s always good to get out of your comfort zone. So in previewing collections to read I came across this one from Naomi Shihab Nye. I read and taught […]