Overview

""None of us is likely to forget the 'virustime, ' but feisty, funny, resourceful, creative Arden (along with her quirky family and motley crew of rescue dogs) is a comforting and inspiring reminder that the worst of times can bring out the best in us. Ark will help young readers see how they, too, kindled their own light to find their way through a dark time."" --Lauren Wolk, author of Echo Mountain ""Infectiously hopeful.""--Kirkus Reviews Arden thinks the world has ended when her parents decide to trade their large house (where she has her own purple bedroom with a window seat!) for a small backyard guesthouse, built like a wooden boat. The worst part: it's not big enough for their dog to come along. Things get even worse when her best friend moves away and a pandemic shuts school, leaving Arden's family quarantined in very little space. Arden just wishes life would go back to normal. As neighbors leave town, shut themselves away, and get sick, their pets are left behind, and Arden becomes the safe-keeper of all the abandoned animals. When the pandemic touches home, Arden must use all her creativity and courage to help those she loves--family, friends, and dogs! Ark was inspired by author Elisabeth Sharp McKetta's experience of living in a 275-square-foot tiny house with her husband and two children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like Arden, Elisabeth's family learned to live large in a small space.

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9781589881792

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Reviews

PRAISE FOR ELISABETH SHARP MCKETTA'S OTHER BOOKS: The essayist Elisabeth McKetta is a wonderful storyteller who takes us generously into her life, which always seems initially off-balance, full of falls, disappointments, and reversals, and yet, in the end, joyous. Her collection is humane, amusing, touching, and very satisfying. Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction, on Awake with Asashoryu When someone is ill, many old cultures say that they have lost their story. I believe that reading the stories in What Doesn't Kill Her will help each of us to trust and tell our own. Gloria Steinem, on What Doesn't Kill Her The imaginative reworking of the mythology of death and the afterlife creates a remarkable mode for examining love and loss. McKetta uses language with an artistry that evokes sensory experience. Booklist on She Never Told Me About the Ocean McKetta has offered us a complicated portrait of mothers and daughters, cupped inside one another like nesting dolls. --Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha, on She Never Told Me About the Ocean For some years now, I have been reading and appreciating Elisabeth Sharp McKetta's exceptional Poetry for Strangers project. With generosity, inclusiveness, and openness to the wonders of nature and the human spirit, McKetta reaches out to those strangers, encountered by chance, inviting them to participate in an art form that non-writers so often consider alien territory. She is a bridge-builder of the most original kind. And, equally admirable, from this unpredictable starting point she writes many amazingly good, complexly developed poems, imbued with her own intelligence, wit, and kind perceptiveness. Lydia Davis, author of Can't and Won't, on Poetry for Strangers Elisabeth McKetta taps fairy tales, and, presto, they transform themselves into living things that reach out and tug at us, reminding us of the exquisite fragility in 'once upon a time.' --Maria Tatar, author of The Fairest of Them All, on The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell Elisabeth McKetta grapples with the bedrock basics of being human. All of the imperatives of flesh--love, lust, the making and breaking of hearts, marriage, children, and all the rest--get full play in her writing. --Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, on The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell

""None of us is likely to forget the 'virustime, ' but feisty, funny, resourceful, creative Arden (along with her quirky family and motley crew of rescue dogs) is a comforting and inspiring reminder that the worst of times can bring out the best in us. Ark will help young readers see how they, too, kindled their own light to find their way through a dark time."" --Lauren Wolk, author of Echo Mountain ""Infectiously hopeful."" --Kirkus Reviews ""Elisabeth Sharp McKetta's powerful novel Ark serves as a reminder that 'home is where your animals are.'"" ―Foreword Reviews ""In this unforgettable, charming story, every reader will sympathize with Arden, who endures the loss of her best friend, her dog, and a home she adores. As the world becomes uncertain outside her new tiny house because of a virus, Arden's loneliness and frustration are palpable through Elisabeth McKetta's straight-forward, yet poetic style. In Ark, Elisabeth McKetta has conjured a unique family and a girl whom the reader longs to hug and befriend all the way to the end."" --Michelle Lee, author of Between the Lighthouse and You ""I loved this thoughtful page-turner. Heroine Arden--loving, plucky, and cranky often enough to ring 100% true--and her family charmed and enlightened me. I zipped through her story the first time, but I'll return with a sharp pencil handy to better note the many wise passages."" --Ellen Airgood, author of Prairie Evers ""Ark will inspire all who read it but especially middle graders who need something to hold on to when the world suddenly changes course. Beautiful and heartfelt, Ark is a lifeboat to sing in when any storm comes along."" --Mary Sullivan Walsh, author of High

"""I loved this thoughtful page-turner. Heroine Arden--loving, plucky, and cranky often enough to ring 100% true--and her family charmed and enlightened me. I zipped through her story the first time, but I'll return with a sharp pencil handy to better note the many wise passages."" --Ellen Airgood, author of Prairie Evers ""Ark will inspire all who read it but especially middle graders who need something to hold on to when the world suddenly changes course. Beautiful and heartfelt, Ark is a lifeboat to sing in when any storm comes along."" --Mary Sullivan Walsh, author of High ""None of us is likely to forget the 'virustime, ' but feisty, funny, resourceful, creative Arden (along with her quirky family and motley crew of rescue dogs) is a comforting and inspiring reminder that the worst of times can bring out the best in us. Ark will help young readers see how they, too, kindled their own light to find their way through a dark time."" --Lauren Wolk, author of Echo Mountain ""In this unforgettable, charming story, every reader will sympathize with Arden, who endures the loss of her best friend, her dog, and a home she adores. As the world becomes uncertain outside her new tiny house because of a virus, Arden's loneliness and frustration are palpable through Elisabeth McKetta's straight-forward, yet poetic style. In Ark, Elisabeth McKetta has conjured a unique family and a girl whom the reader longs to hug and befriend all the way to the end."" --Michelle Lee, author of Between the Lighthouse and You PRAISE FOR ELISABETH SHARP MCKETTA'S OTHER BOOKS: ""The essayist Elisabeth McKetta is a wonderful storyteller who takes us generously into her life, which always seems initially off-balance, full of falls, disappointments, and reversals, and yet, in the end, joyous. Her collection is humane, amusing, touching, and very satisfying."" ―Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction, on Awake with Asashoryu ""When someone is ill, many old cultures say that they have lost their story. I believe that reading the stories in What Doesn't Kill Her will help each of us to trust and tell our own."" ―Gloria Steinem, on What Doesn't Kill Her ""The imaginative reworking of the mythology of death and the afterlife creates a remarkable mode for examining love and loss. McKetta uses language with an artistry that evokes sensory experience."" ―Booklist on She Never Told Me About the Ocean ""McKetta has offered us a complicated portrait of mothers and daughters, cupped inside one another like nesting dolls."" --Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha, on She Never Told Me About the Ocean ""For some years now, I have been reading and appreciating Elisabeth Sharp McKetta's exceptional Poetry for Strangers project. With generosity, inclusiveness, and openness to the wonders of nature and the human spirit, McKetta reaches out to those strangers, encountered by chance, inviting them to participate in an art form that non-writers so often consider alien territory. She is a bridge-builder of the most original kind. And, equally admirable, from this unpredictable starting point she writes many amazingly good, complexly developed poems, imbued with her own intelligence, wit, and kind perceptiveness."" ―Lydia Davis, author of Can't and Won't, on Poetry for Strangers ""Elisabeth McKetta taps fairy tales, and, presto, they transform themselves into living things that reach out and tug at us, reminding us of the exquisite fragility in 'once upon a time.'"" --Maria Tatar, author of The Fairest of Them All, on The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell ""Elisabeth McKetta grapples with the bedrock basics of being human. All of the imperatives of flesh--love, lust, the making and breaking of hearts, marriage, children, and all the rest--get full play in her writing."" --Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, on The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell"

Author Information

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta is the author of thirteen books including She Never Told Me About the Ocean and Awake with Asashoryu, both published by Paul Dry Books, and Edit Your Life, published by Penguin Random House. She and her family used to live in a backyard tiny house in Boise, Idaho, like Arden and Martin; now they live in an ordinary house.

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