World of Wonders
Aimee Nezhukumatathil has written poetry for two decades, and her first prose book treats the natural world the way a poet would. Each chapter takes a single organism, the catalpa tree, the axolotl, the dragon fruit, the firefly, and uses it to enter a moment from her life. She writes about being the only brown girl in a small town Arizona classroom, falling in love, having her first son, teaching at Ole Miss. Fumi Mini Nakamura's color illustrations open each chapter. The book was Barnes and Noble's 2020 Book of the Year and one of the titles Cheryl Strayed flagged that fall.
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What you might want to know about World of Wonders
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil pairs short essays on animals and plants with scenes from her life as the daughter of immigrants and a mother of two boys.
Yes. Strayed picked the book on her Amazon Books Editors guest list of 2020 favorites, calling out Nezhukumatathil's eye for the natural world and the way she braids it with memoir.
No. The essays are short and accessible, and the illustrations give a visual anchor for any organism a reader is unfamiliar with.
World of Wonders was written by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, published in 2020 by Milkweed Editions.
World of Wonders is 184 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, World of Wonders takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
World of Wonders is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.