About this item
With her breakout bestseller Keep Moving, Maggie Smith captured the nation with her "meditations on kindness and hope" (NPR) . Now, with Goldenrod, the award-winning poet returns with a powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory. Pulling objects from everyday life - a hallway mirror, a rock found in her son's pocket, a field of goldenrods at the side of the road - she reveals the magic of the present moment. Only Maggie Smith could turn an autocorrect mistake into a line of poetry, musing that her phone "doesn't observe / the high holidays, autocorrecting / shana tova to shaman tobacco, / Rosh Hashanah to rose has hands." Slate called Smith's "superpower as a writer" her "ability to find the perfect concrete metaphor for inchoate human emotions and explore it with empathy and honesty.
About the Author
I enjoy inhabiting the child's world - especially between the ages of two and six when so much is magical and exciting. My stories spring from strong memories and feelings from my own childhood in a small New England town where craft and creativity were the norm. In my illustrations I try to create colorful and warm inviting worlds with expressive characters that draw readers in. Most of my books have lots of details to engage the curious minds of little ones and so that with repeat readings they can always find something new - this is the kind of book I loved as a child. My favorites were by Richard Scarry, Arnold Lobel, Cindy Szekeres, and Maurice Sendak - especially his early tiny pen & ink drawings for books written by Ruth Kraus.In my adult life I have lived in New York City, Larchmont NY, coastal RI, Providence RI, Los Angeles, Austin and Seattle. Currently I live in Long Beach CA, a block and a half from the beach. Life is always interesting and ideas for books are always springing!
