World of wonders : in praise of whale sharks, fireflies, and other astonishments /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year." --NPR

From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction--a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.

As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance.

"What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts.

Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

FIREFLY Photinus pyralis When the first glimmer-pop of firefly light appears on a summer night, I always want to call my mother just to say hello. The bibliography of the firefly is a tender and electric dress, a small flame sputtering in the ditches along a highway, and the elytra covering the hind wings of the firefly lift like a light leather, suppler than any other beetle's. In flight, it is like a loud laugh, the kind that only appears in summer, with the stink of meats sizzling somewhere down the street and the mouths of neighborhood children stained with popsicle juice and hinging open with the excitement of a ball game or tag. I used to see fireflies as we drove home from family vacations, back to rural western New York. My father loved to commute through the night, to avoid the summer glare and heat. My sister and I would be wrapped in blankets, separated by a giant ice chest in the back seat, and I'd fall in and out of a sleep made all the more delicious by hearing the pleasant murmurings of my parents in the front. Sometimes I tried to listen, but looking out the car window, I'd always get distracted by the erratic flashes of light blurring past us. For a couple of weeks every June, in the Great Smoky Mountains, the only species of synchronous firefly in North America converges for a flashy display. Years ago, my family stopped in this area during one of our epic road trips. My father knew to park our car away from the side of an impossibly verdant hill that plunged into a wide valley full of trillium, pin cherry, and hobblebush. He knew to cover our one flashlight with a red bag, so as not to disturb the fireflies, and to only point it at the ground as he led his wife and semi-aloof teenage daughters through the navy blue pause just moments after twilight. I confess, at first I wanted to be back in the air-conditioned hotel room--anywhere but on an isolated gravel path with the odd bullfrog clamor interrupting the dark. But now I think of my sister and I scattered in different homes now as adults and am so grateful for all of those family vacations where we could be outdoors together, walking this earth. My mother's temper was always frazzled by vacation's end, but I know each day off from work and spent with her family was something sweet and rare. How I crave those slow vacation days and even slower nights, her taking her time to select our frilled nightclothes, to laugh about the day's sightseeing and the cheap trinkets I'd bought. She'd pull a coverlet to my chin. Her gorgeous, dark wavy hair tickled when she leaned over to kiss me good-night, smelling of Oil of Olay and spearmint gum. Only on those trips would I know such a degree of tenderness, the quiet reassurances a mother can give a daughter, while she stroked my bangs to the side of my face. No rush in the mornings to get me and my sister shuffled onto a school bus and herself off to work. When my mother is no longer here, I know I will cling to that lovely fragrance of mint and a moisturizer I'll always associate with beauty and love. I will cling to those summer nights we raced--and yet didn't race--home. I will try to bang myself back to that Oldsmobile like the lacewings that argue nightly with my porch light bulb, to what was my small family then, not even big enough to call a swarm: one sister, two parents. I grew up near scientists who worked with indigo buntings. There is no other blue like that of these birds, no feather more electric. They navigate by following the North Star, and these scientists were trying to trick them into following a false star in a darkened room. But most of them don't fall for the ruse. When released, they find their way home the same as always. The buntings know the North Star by heart, learn to look for it in their first summer of life, storing this knowledge to use years later when they first learn to migrate. How they must have spent hours gazing at the star during those nestling nights, peeking out from under their mother. What shines so strong holds them steady. Where the buntings remain steadfast, fireflies are more easily deceived. They lose their light rhythm for a few minutes after a single car's headlights pass. Sometimes it takes hours for them to recalibrate their blinking patterns. What gets lost in the radio silence? What connections are translated incorrectly or missed entirely? Porch lights, trucks, buildings, and the harsh glow of streetlamps all complicate matters and discourage fireflies from sending out their love-light signals--meaning fewer firefly larvae are born the next year. Scientists can't agree on how or why these fireflies achieve synchronicity. Perhaps it is a competition between males, who all want to be the first to send their signals across the valleys and manna grass. Perhaps if they all flash at once, the females can better determine whose glow is most radiant. Whatever the reason--and in spite of, or rather, because of, all the guided tours that now pop up in the Smokies--fireflies don't glow in sync all night long anymore. The patterns sometimes occur in short flashes, then abruptly end in haunting periods of darkness. The fireflies are still out there, but they fly or rest on grass blades in visual silence. Perhaps a visitor forgot to dim a flashlight or left their car lights on for too long, and this is the firefly's protest. Firefly eggs and larvae are bioluminescent, and the larvae themselves hunt for prey. They can detect a slime trail from a slug or snail and follow it all the way to the juicy, unsuspecting source. Whole groups of larvae have been known to track relatively large prey, such as an earthworm--like a macabre, candlelit chase right out of an old B-movie, to the edge of a soupy pond, the larvae pulsing light as they devour a still-wriggling worm. Some firefly larvae live completely underwater, their lights fevering just under the surface as they capture and devour aquatic snails. For a beetle, fireflies live long and full lives--around two years--though most of it is spent underground, gloriously eating and sleeping to their heart's content. When we see these beacons flashing their lights, they usually have only one or two weeks left to live. Learning this as a child--I could often be found walking slowly around untrimmed lawns, stalling and not quite ready to go inside for dinner--made me melancholy, even in the face of their brilliance. I couldn't believe something so full of light would be gone so soon. I know I will search for fireflies all the rest of my days, even though they dwindle a little more each year. I can't help it. They blink on and off, a lime glow to the summer night air, as if to say: I am still here, you are still here, I am still here, you are still here, I am, you are , over and over again. Perhaps I can will it to be true. Perhaps I can keep those summer nights with my family inside an empty jam jar, with holes poked in the lid, a twig and a few strands of grass tucked inside. And for those unimaginable nights in the future, when I know I'll miss my mother the most--I will let that jar's sweet glow serve as a night-light to cool and cut the air for me. Excerpted from World of Wonder: Essays by Aimee Nezhukumatathil All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Award-winning poet Nezhukumatathil (English, Univ. of Mississippi; Oceanic) intertwines snapshots of memoir with a fascinating look at various animals and plants in this account weaving memories of growing up feeling like an outsider, a brown girl in an overwhelmingly white world, with facts about the flora and fauna that are important touchstones for her. She shares reminiscences about her family, her work, and the importance of the natural world in her life. Racism follows her from childhood, including an instance when a teacher dismisses her drawing of a favorite bird because it's not an American species. Throughout, she describes how she turned to nature in times of need, finding both comfort and solace. Elegant illustrations by Nakamura enhance the text. VERDICT A lyrical exploration of a woman finding her true home in the world, interspersed with hauntingly beautiful descriptions of the lives of the animals and plants that illuminate it, this natural history will appeal to nature lovers and readers who relish thoughtful, introspective works. Also suggest to fans of Margaret Renkl's Late Migrations.--Sue O'Brien, Downers Grove, IL

Booklist Review

This collection of essays contemplating the wonders of nature is fresh and engaging, and offers frequent surprises and perceptive commentary. Author Nezhukumatathil has previously published volumes of poetry, and now her prose flows effortlessly, with precise vocabulary that evokes clear images and captures insightful nuance. She weaves childhood memories and anecdotes about her current life as a poet, college professor, wife, and mother into her rapturous takes on flora and fauna. In just one essay she folds in the ecstatic courting dance of a bird of paradise, the profusion of vivid saris at her wedding, also encompassing an inept DJ, the Macarena, and a New York dance floor flooded with guests from India and Kansas. Another essay celebrates the axolotl, an amazing salamander that always appears to be smiling. She recommends adopting that same expression when "a white girl tries to tell you what you can and cannot wear for make-up." Nezhukumatathil's essays, with vibrant illustrations from Fumi Mini Nakamura, are in turn humorous, poignant, relatable, passionate (especially when she's bemoaning disappearing species and habitats), and always interesting.

Kirkus Book Review

A poet celebrates the wonders of nature in a collection of essays that could almost serve as a coming-of-age memoir. The daughter of an Indian father and Filipino mother, Nezhukumatathil was often the only brown face in her classrooms, and she sought lessons from nature on how to adapt, protect herself, and conform or fit in but still be able to stand strong on her own. She shares those lessons throughout these frequently enchanting essays. Take the axolotl, from whom the author learned the "salamander smile": "If a white girl tries to tell you what your brown skin can and cannot wear for makeup, just remember the smile of an axolotl. The best thing to do in that moment is to just smile and smile, even if your smile is thin. The tighter your smile, the tougher you become." Nezhukumatathil's investigations, enhanced by Nakamura's vividly rendered full-color illustrations, range across the world, from a rapturous rendering of monsoon season in her father's native India to her formative years in Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona, where she learned from the native flora and fauna that it was common to be different. The corpse flower guided the author when she met her future husband, helping her to "clear out the sleaze, the unsavory, the unpleasant--the weeds--of the dating world" and "find a man who'd be happy when I bloomed." Nezhukumatathil isn't only interested in nature as metaphor. She once devoted most of a year's sabbatical to the study of whale sharks, and she humanizes her experience of natural splendor to the point where observation and memory merge, where she can't see or smell something without remembering the details of her environment when she first encountered it. Among other fascinating species, the author enlightens readers on the vampire squid, the bonnet macaque, and the red-spotted newt. The writing dazzles with the marvel of being fully alive. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of four collections of poems, including, most recently, Oceanic , winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Other awards for her writing include fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Mississippi Arts Council, and MacDowell. Her writing appears in Poetry , the New York Times Magazine , ESPN , and Tin House . She serves as poetry faculty for the Writing Workshops in Greece and is professor of English and creative writing in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.