Snow-a poem that seemed so appropriate today

Snow
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Once with my scarf knotted over my mouth I lumbered into a storm of snow up the long hill and did not know where I was going except to the top of it. In those days we went out like that. Even children went out like that. Someone was crying hard at home again, raging blizzard of sobs. I dragged the sled by its rope, which we normally did not do when snow was coming down so hard, pulling my brother whom I called by our secret name as if we could be other people under the skin. The snow bit into my face, prickling the rim of the head where the hair starts coming out. And it was a big one. It would come down and down for days. People would dig their cars out like potatoes. How are you doing back there? I shouted, and he said Fine, I’m doing fine, in the sunniest voice he could muster and I think I should love him more today for having used it. At the top we turned and he slid down, steering himself with the rope gripped in his mittened hands. I stumbled behind sinking deeply, shouting Ho! Look at him go! as if we were having a good time. Alone on the hill. That was the deepest I ever went into the snow. Now I think of it when I stare at paper or into silences between human beings. The drifting accumulation. A father goes months without speaking to his son. How there can be a place so cold any movement saves you. Ho! You bang your hands together, stomp your feet. The father could die! The son! Before the weather changes.
"Snow" from Fuel by Naomi Shihab Nye. Copyright © 1998 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Used by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.

A Poem to think about...

Burning the Old Year

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,

only the things I didn’t do

crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (1995).

More new books...

Okay! Time for part two! Here's a locally set novel entitled Word Nerd by Susin Nielsen. Ambrose has moved around a lot with his mom and now he is living in Kitsilano in the basement apartment of a kind Greek couple. His peanut allergy and somewhat excentric dress has not made him popular at his new school. After a couple of bullies almost kill him with a peanut, his mom decides that home schooling may be the route to go with weekly trips to the school's computer lab. Into his world moves Cosmo, the Economolopolis' black sheep son, who has been in jail and now is living with his parents. An unlikely friendship slowly develops and Ambrose and Cosmo end up joining the Vancouver Scrabble Club when his mom is unknowingly teaching at night at UBC. The book is great with twists and turns, lots of humour, and a well driven plot. This book is for elementary readers.

Pieces of Georgia by Jen Bryant is a book about a girl whose artist mom has died, lives in a trailer with her uncommunicative dad, and is deemed "at risk". Her life changes with a membership to the Brandywine River Museum. Georgia (named after Georgia O'Keefe) has no idea who has given her this gift and she has never been to the museum but it becomes a refuge for this fledgling artist as she finds solace in the work of Andrew and Jamie Wyeth. She also makes a new friend who appears to have everything but has her own set of problems. The book is written in the form of a diary in beautiful blank verse. I think students in grade seven and eight would enjoy this book. In looking at her website, I discovered she wrote a favorite picture book biography of mine, Georgia's Bones. I think this book would be of interest to upper intermediate to grade eight students.

Just One Wish by Janette Rallison is hilarious although the heroine is tackling a serious subject, making her little brother who has cancer have his wish come true, to meet the star of his favorite television show, Robin Hood. Annika and her best friend, Madison, set off to the Los Angeles to "capture" the actor who plays the part. Needless to say, this is not easy to accomplish but Annika is nothing if not persistent and she has a noble aim.

Now for a different setting, Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman. At the beginning of the novel, fifteen year old Vidya lives comfortably with her family in Bombay during the Second World War. Her father, a doctor, is brain damaged in a demonstration, and the family is forced to leave Bombay to live in Madras, in the strict Brahmin home of her paternal grandfather with extended family. Vidya feels totally imprisoned and her dreams to go to university become seemingly impossible as the extended family wants her to marry. Needless to say, Vidya finds a way out, but this is an interesting picture of life in India in this time period.