Noname Porter-mcshirley

Pebbles, Blisters, and Handfuls of Sunlight: Treasures of a Traveling Teenager Noname Porter-mcshirley

These sixty nuggets range in size from token pebbles (just four lines long), to a 523 line poetic story of one day's adventure with a camera and a sister.

Like polished journal entries, these compositions are snippets of joy, heartache, contemplation, nature, faith, fun, work, triumph and growth---all from the heart and mind of a teenaged girl laboring to consciously choose the bricks of her internal foundation on which to mature.

Noname (no-NAY-me) wrote all of these poems between the ages of 9 and 19, while traveling the United States with her family---on a shoestring and a prayer. Now 35 with a family of her own, and settled in the middle of the country, she has edited and illustrated this volume, hoping it will comfort, help, and encourage other teenagers with their own struggles on their roads to adulthood.


"Awesome! Great flow, good detail, great everything! [My] favorite--'Sunset at a Creek.' Great that there are religious poems. Overall--perfect!!!!!" ---Gracie Brown, 16

"Filled to bursting with the whims, fancies, and worries of a young woman, this is the most genuinely human collection of poems I have read. A teenage girl lives minute by minute, seeing the same world in a completely different light with each moment. This book speaks to that in a very delicate way. It is a comfort to know that whether you are traveling the country in the 70s and 80s or trying to keep up in a suburban high school, our problems and joys are all the same. This collection is an elegant, encouraging read." ---Sophie Cameron, 15