The beloved author of Forever Fifty and Suddenly Sixty tackles the ins and outs of becoming a septuagenarian with wry good humor. Fans of Viorst’s funny, touching, and wise decades poems will love these verses filled with witty advice and reflections on marriage, milestones, and middle-aged children. Viorst explores, among the many other issues of this stage of life, the state of our sex lives and teeth, how we can stay married though thermostatically incompatible, and the joys of grandparenthood and shopping. Readers will nod with rueful recognition when she asks, “Am I required to think of myself as a basically shallow woman because I feel better when my hair looks good?,” when she presses a few helpful suggestions on her kids because “they may be middle aged, but they’re still my children,” and when she graciously—but not too graciously—selects her husband’s next mate in a poem deliciously subtitled “If I Should Die Before I Wake, Here’s the Wife You Next Should Take.” Though Viorst acknowledges she is definitely not a good sport about the fact that she is mortal, her poems are full of the pleasures of life right now, helping us come to terms with the passage of time, encouraging us to keep trying to fix the world, and inviting us to consider “drinking wine, making love, laughing hard, caring hard, and learning a new trick or two as part of our job description at seventy.” I'm Too Young to Be Seventy is a joy to read and makes a heartwarming gift for anyone who has reached or is soon to reach that—it’s not so bad after all—seventh decade. Judith Viorst is the author of the beloved Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day , which has sold some four million copies; the Lulu books, including Lulu and the Brontosaurus ; the New York Times bestseller Necessary Losses ; four musicals; and poetry for children and adults. Her most recent books of poetry include What Are You Glad About? What Are You Mad About? and Nearing Ninety . She lives in Washington, DC. I'm Too Young To Be Seventy And Other Delusions By Judith Viorst Free Press Copyright ©2005 Judith Viorst All right reserved. ISBN: 0743267745 As Time Goes By I wake up on Monday, Eat lunch on Wednesday, Go to sleep on Friday, And next thing I know it's The middle of next week And I am shaking mothballs Out of the winter clothes I stored for the summer Five minutes ago, Because snowstorms follow The Fourth of July Faster than faxes, Faster than e-mail, Faster, maybe, than the speed of light. You want to slow down time? Try root canal. Try an MRI. Try waiting for the report on the biopsy. Or try being a child on a rainy morning With nothing to do, Wishing away the hours, the days, the years, As if there will Always Always Always Be more. Copyright © 2005 by Judith Viorst Continues... Excerpted from I'm Too Young To Be Seventy by Judith Viorst Copyright ©2005 by Judith Viorst. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.