WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS AND OTHER ASTONISHMENTS by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Aimee Nezhukumatathil . Unknown Year . English
A New York Times Bestseller 'Within two pages, nature writing feels different and fresh and new ... This book demands we find the eyes to see and the heart to love such things once more. It is a very fine book indeed, truly full of wonder' - James Rebanks, author of Pastoral Song 'Unusual and captivating ... a thing of wonder, the book that most took me by surprise this year' - Jini Reddy, author of Wanderland Aimee Nezhukumatathil has had many homes, but wherever she was - however awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape - she found guidance and perspective in nature. The axolotl smiles, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shakes off unwanted advances; the narwhal survives its hostile environment. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. Warm, lyrical and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Mini Nakamura, this book ranges through joy and pain, encountering love, motherhood and heritage, racism and the destruction humans can wreak. In all those things, it shows that if you listen carefully, if you open your eyes wide, the world is full of wonders.
Categories: Literary Fiction
About the Author
Aimee Nezhukumatathil was born in Chicago to a Filipina mother and South Indian father. She earned her BA and MFA from the Ohio State University and was a Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is the New York Times bestselling author of two illustrated essay collections: World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments and Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees. Her books of poems include Miracle Fruit (2003), winner of the ForeWord Magazine Poetry Book of the Year and the Global Filipino Literary Award; At the Drive-In Volcano (2007), winner of the Balcones Prize; Lucky Fish (2011); Oceanic (2018), and Night Owl (Ecco, 2026). With Ross Gay she co-wrote the chapbook of epistolary nature poems, Lace and Pyrite (2014). Nezhukumatathil's work has appeared in Poetry magazine, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and American Poetry Review. She spent a decade as poetry editor for Orion Magazine and then Sierra, the storytelling branch of the Sierra Club. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. A professor for over 25 years, she is the recipient of the The North American Association of Environmental Educators' (NAAEE) Pepe Marcos-Iga Award for Innovation in Environmental Education and is a US Artists Fellow. She serves as a firefly guide for Mississippi State Parks and lives in Oxford, Mississippi with her husband and sons.
