Amanda West Lewis
“…a splendid, genuine, and beautifully told story, written with authority and an ear for music and truth.”
Louise Hawes, author of Language of Stars, Waiting for Christopher, Big Rig
These are not the words
​"I’m Miranda Billie Taylor.
I make sense of the world with words."
Miranda is called Missy for short, and she lives in the most exciting city in the world. She goes to a great school where she learns about poetry, music and plays. She has a best friend she has known forever, and two cats named Stan and Ollie.
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Most of all, Missy has cool parents. Her mother goes to art school, and her father is a drummer who works in advertising and takes Missy on secret midnight excursions to Harlem and the Village so she can share his love of jazz. Missy and her father write poems for each other — poems that gradually become an exchange of apologies as his alcohol and drug addiction begin to take over their lives.
Based on the events and people of Amanda West Lewis’s own childhood, this poignant and poetic story is set against the thrum and grit of New York City’s legendary jazz scene in the 1960s.
Listed by the American League of Poets as one of the best novels in verse, summer 2022. Listed in the Globe and Mail's best books for young people, Fall 2022
Praise for
These Are Not The Words
“I couldn’t resist reading it straight through. I just loved it. Truly, a stunning story."​
Kathi Apelt,
author of The Underneath, Maybe a Fox, Once Upon a Camel
“Missy's sweet and hurting heart nearly broke me… a masterpiece.”
J. Albert Mann, author of Fix, The Degenerates, What Every Girl Should Know
“A poetic punch to the gut. You won’t be able to stop reading.”
Martha Brockenbrough,
author of Into the Bloodred Woods, UnPresidented, Alexander Hamilton, The Game of Love and Death