World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

"Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year." --NPR
A New York Times Bestseller
Barnes & Noble Book of the Year

Beloved author Aimee Nezhukumatathil's celebrated work of nonfiction, now including additional essays and illustrations. 

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.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil's books include LUCKY FISH (2011), AT THE DRIVE-IN VOLCANO (2007), which won the Balcones Prize, and MIRACLE FRUIT (2003), which won the Tupelo Press Prize, the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award in Poetry, and the Global Filipino Award. Her poetry and essays have published in Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, FIELD, Mid-American Review, and Tin House, among other publications. Aimee received a National Endowment for the Arts scholarship in 2009, has taught at the Kundiman retreat for Asian-American authors twice, and has delivered readings and workshops from Amsterdam to San Francisco. She is an associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Fredonia, where she has received the Hagan Young Scholar Award and the SUNY Chancellor's Prize for Academic and Artistic Activity. Her family consists of her spouse and two small sons.