Is This Forever, or What?
Poems & Paintings from Texas
Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye
Various Illustrators

   Texas is a state that has everything – the ocean, the plains, the rivers, small towns, and gigantic cultural cities. Life there is both like and unlike life everywhere else. People grow and change with the times just like everywhere else, but they also cling onto what makes them feel at home in the gigantic state, the world they knew growing up. They embrace their world like a child embraces a teddy bear and the poems and paintings in this book are amazing proof of how much treasure there is to be found in such a unique state.

    One of the poems, “Almost Asleep” by Ken Fontenot, happens to be one of my favorites. An excerpt is printed on the back cover of the book along with my favorite painting, “Dream of Texas” by Deborah Maverick Kelley.

I am close to my bed. I am close to my book.
I am close to my chair. And my silence lights the room.
There is no other real joy but this:
To feel as if a glass of milk were warming
Inside one’s stomach...

   This is just one of the many amazing poems by various poets contained in this massive book. There is also a section in the back called “Notes on the Contributors” which lists each artist and poet and their information. I highly recommend this book for anyone who loves the feeling of warm wind gusts and at its best and worst.