Susie Anderson
Staff Writer
Growing up with music and lullabies, Chautauqua’s young readers carry their family’s stories and songs with them. In Week Eight, CLSC Young Readers and Early Readers will embrace family, music and storytelling in Naomi Shihab Nye’s Grace Notes: Poems About Family and Zeena M. Pliska’s Egyptian Lullaby.
At 12:15 p.m. today on the porch of the Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall, Institution arts education staffers Suzanne Fassett-Wright and Rachel Lykins will lead young readers in a discussion surrounding this week’s selections.
Nye, author of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle’s Week Eight selection The Tiny Journalist and the CLSC Young Readers’ selection Grace Notes, is the author and editor of more than 30 volumes of poetry, fiction and essays for adults and children. She is the recipient of the Lavan Award, Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and four Puschart Prizes, among other recognitions. For Nye, poetry serves as a uniting force across ages.
“I think I have always been a writer for any age,” Nye said. “I still feel in some ways that I am writing to the child in all of us when I write anything.”
Navigating themes of family, love, kindness, empathy and grief, Grace Notes presents familial experiences drawn from Nye’s own childhood and family as a Palestinian American. For Stephine Hunt, managing director of literary arts, the title drew her in as a multilayered play on words.
“Grace Notes is about finding grace in hard and challenging situations, finding grace in religion, but it’s also about the grace notes in music,” Hunt said. “Poetry itself being lyrical, (Nye) has a way of making the poetry even more musical.”
Compiling lyrical poems about topics ranging from familial struggle to joy and growing up, Nye said that she hopes her work transcends age.
“I’m just trying to stay close to that child self that keeps us full of wonder and curiosity,” Nye said. “All good poems are for all ages.”
For the Early Readers, Egyptian Lullaby, written by Pliska and illustrated by Hatem Aly, brings music to life in a love letter to Cairo, Egypt. The book follows Ametti Fatma as her Auntie Fatma’s lullabies transport her to the vibrant culture of Cairo and remind her of her heritage. When selecting an Early Readers selection to fit the Chautauqua Lecture Series’ theme of “The Middle East: The Gulf States’ Emerging Influence,” Hunt saw Egyptian Lullaby as blending a celebration of culture with the form of a picture book.
“A lot of great and important picture books that are related to Middle Eastern humanity are refugee-related,” Hunt said. “Even though they’re absolutely important and we want people to read those books, our goal with selecting Egyptian Lullaby was to find a book set in a Middle Eastern country or adjacent country that celebrated that country’s history and culture.”
In an ode to Cairo’s people, history and culture, Egyptian Lullaby transports Early Readers alongside Ametti. After exploring familial influence in Nye’s Grace Notes and drifting into Egyptian history during Wednesday’s discussion, young readers are invited to the lawn of Alumni Hall for a Play CHQ event.
