Product Description 
A lyrical novel-in-verse that takes us through the journey of coming of age in New York during the 80s.\nAlma's life is a series of halfways: She's half-Chinese, half-Jewish; her parents spend half the time fighting, and the other half silent; and she's halfway through becoming a woman. But as long as she can listen to her Walkman, hang out with her friends on the stoops of the Village, and ride her bike around the streets of New York, it feels like everything will be all right. Then comes the year when everything changes, and her life is overtaken by constant endings: friends move away, romances bloom and wither, her parents divorce and--just like that--her life as she knew it is over. In this world of confusing beginnings, middles, and endings, is Alma ready to press play on the soundtrack of her life?\nFrom School Library Journal 
Gr 6-9-It's 1982, and Alma Rosen is 13 years old. She is in her final year of middle school and can feel her world changing around her. Her parents are on the cusp of divorce, she just started her period, and she can see her friendships growing and changing. Alma spends her days listening to music on her Walkman, riding her bike through the East and West Villages of NYC, and eating candy. This novel-in-verse is filled with interstitials such as lists, postcards to family and friends, and letters to her Grandma Miriam who passed away but whom she misses dearly. Alma is Jewish on her paternal side and Chinese on her maternal side, and both of these facets of her identity have deeply influenced the way she walks in the world. All the characters, from primary to tertiary, are fully developed. Alma's relationships with her grandparents, her parents, her friends, and even her school social worker are important to her and shine throughout the story. Additionally, Cane brings 1980s New York City to life with organic references to the music, books, and media Alma consumes. There is a strong sense of her neighborhood through the friends she spends her days with and landmarks she roams to on her bicycle. VERDICT This beautifully written, emotionally charged look at growing up and moving through life's changes is a great addition to upper middle grade collections looking for detailed and nuanced coming-of-age stories.-Kristyn Dorfman, Friends Academy, Locust Valley, NYα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. 
 About the Author 
Tina Cane grew up in downtown New York City during the 70s and 80s, surrounded by artists and writers and musicians, and she draws much of her creative inspiration from that era. The founder/ director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI, Tina also currently serves as the poet laureate of Rhode Island where she lives with her husband and three children, who are also a major source of inspiration.

Alma Presses Play

Teen & Young Adult

Cane, Tina

Literature & Fiction

Make Me a World

Are You Nobody Too?

After years of discomfort as the only Chinese student at her private middle school, Emily transfers to Chinatown's I.S. 23 for 8th Grade and ends up feeling more disconnected than ever. In this coming-of-age novel-in-verse, will Emily be able to find her way or will she lose herself completely? After a year of distance-learning, Emily Sofer finds her world turned upside down: she has to leave the only school she's ever known to attend a public school in Chinatown. For the first time, Emily isn't the only Chinese student around...but looking like everyone else doesn't mean that understanding them will be easy--especially with an intimidating group of cool girls Emily calls The Five. When Emily discovers that her adoptive parents have been keeping a secret, she feels even more uncertain about who she is. A chance discovery of Emily Dickinson's poetry helps her finally feel seen. . . but can the words of a writer from 200 years ago help her open up again, and find common ground with the Five?

Children's Books

Poetry. ONCE MORE WITH FEELING is a collection of poems that takes us through urban and personal landscapes. It shows us particular landmarks of New York, as well as a particular New York, one lived through the experience of a speaker that boldly expresses anecdotes of all hues. This is a book about her relationship with a place that has been appropriated into a personal space. The reader is privy to the negotiations that take place in the construction of relationships. ONCE MORE WITH FEELING is an honest and gritty book that invites us to experience the connection between the self, the spaces we inhabit, and the people who share these spaces with us. "Just as her 'earliest hands dug for light in wet sand,' Tina Cane's lyric reveries uncover the treasured details of a youth steeped in New York's once-marginalized neighborhoods. Note the tensions in her 'minor histories,' for example, the self-deprecating resolve that asserts the nobility of cultural experiences we recognize as our own even in the exactness of Cane's personal vision. ONCE MORE WITH FEELING is a mesmerizing debut come to dignify our most worldly passions."—Gregory Pardlo

Once More With Feeling

Poetry

Veliz Books

Poetry. Asian &amp; Asian American Studies. Tina Cane's new collection of poems, BODY OF WORK, fuses the personal and the political as it explores the nature of work, poetry, economics, and motherhood. BODY OF WORK is a meditation on memory and change: the changing landscape of the inner and outer life, of family and city, and the nature of personal and cultural identity. Cane reflects upon the "continual mysteries" of her Chinese-American heritage and the complexities of being a person in the world with others.

Body of Work

Catalogue, essay, lament, YEAR OF THE MURDER HORNET, Tina Cane's new poetry collection, is a work born of tension. Juxtaposing the personal and the political, these poems navigate the uneasy terrain of the self amid an increasingly tumultuous and fragmented world. Taking up the poet's mantle as seeker, Cane interrogates and wrestles with notions of personal narrative, theory, and truth, as well as our collective cultural realities. YEAR OF THE MURDER HORNET is a book of this moment meant for all moments.\nPoetry.

Year of the Murder Hornet

Literary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cane, Tina. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cane, Tina

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cane, Tina. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Alma Presses Play

Are You Nobody Too?

Are You Nobody Too?

Once More With Feeling

Body of Work

Year of the Murder Hornet