Author Naomi Shihab Nye affirms teens as deep and often original thinkers in this collection of short (sometimes very short!) stories featuring thoughtful teen protagonists who care about people and politics, or who reflect on big questions even as they are caught up in the dramas of their own lives. Nye’s respect for teens extends from fictional characters to her real-world readers with stories that invite thinking and discussion, whether it’s about the actions of her characters or the ideas they express. Several of the stories follow the same characters, while other are singular visits offering glimpses of the lives, worlds, and outlooks of individual teens who have moved or are moving beyond self-absorption to consider their relationships with others, and even the state of the world. Teen readers who appreciate intelligence among their peers will find kindred spirits among the teens who inhabit these stories. (Age 12 and older)

In these forty life-altering, life-affirming, and extremely short short stories, the award-winning poet Naomi Shihab Nye proposes that no matter how great the divide between friends, siblings, life and death, classmates, enemies, happiness and misery, war and peace, breakfast and lunch, parent and child, country and city, there is, in fact, no long distance. Not anymore.