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What Do I Read Next?
(Poetry for Students)
- The Philosopher's Club (1993) is Addonizio's first collection of poetry. This small book of fewer than eighty pages is filled with a diverse collection of poems on topics ranging from death to teenage drinking to the world of Anne Frank, a victim of the Holocaust. Here, too, are poems about aspects of women's lives, including the love a mother feels in carrying her daughter to bed and the realization that as daughters grow up, they also grow away.
- Jimmy & Rita (1996) is a verse narrative by Addonizio, focusing on the lives of a young boxer and a prostitute.
- Addonizio's collection Tell Me (2000) was nominated for a National Book Award. It is similar to her other collections in that the poems are sometimes based on her own experiences and are very realistic in their subject content, ranging from divorce to love to spending too much time in a bar.
- Addonizio cowrote The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997) with Dorianne Laux. This book is designed as a textbook for writing poetry, with topics such as choosing a subject and crafting an actual poem.
- What We Carry (1994), by Dorianne Laux, is a collection of poems covering topics as varied as the innocence of childhood and life at forty. Like Addonizio, Laux writes poems about real women and their experiences, and her work is equally accessible. She does not rely on poetic devices that might confuse readers, instead using her poetry to tell stories about ordinary people in such a way that everyone can understand her messages.
- In his novel September 11 from the Inside (2003), Rubram Fernandez presents a fictional account of what experiencing the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, might have been like. Fernandez tries to recreate the stories of those who were on the hijacked planes as well as those who were in the attacked buildings, blending historical details with fictional characters.
- Dear Zoe (2005), by Philip Beard, is the story of a young girl whose sister dies in an automobile accident on September 11, 2001. While the rest of the world focuses on the attacks against the United States, Zoe's older sister tries to separate her grief at her sister's death from the larger grief of the nation. This book specifically targets young adult readers.