These are bite-sized essays, one animal or plant each, illustrated by Fumi Nakamura. Nezhukumatathil is a poet, and each piece runs the natural history alongside her own life — Indian and Filipino parents, a childhood moving between Arizona, Kansas, and New York, being the only brown kid in the room, and later teaching her own sons to look. It’s warm and short and hard to put down. After reading it, I got in touch with Aimee to see if she wanted to interview/have a conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer for Adventure Journal. She was down for it, but their schedules never aligned. One that got away. Sigh.
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments