Nye's work has been highly critically acclaimed from the time her poems started to appear in print. Critics praise Nye's poetry, children's literature, and essays for their pertinent social and humanistic messages and the effectiveness of the direct, unadorned language with which Nye conveys them. Although her style is straightforward and her themes readily understood, Nye is not considered a simple or unsophisticated writer. The opposite is true: Her talent lies in presenting profound and complex human emotion and behavior in a refreshingly uncomplicated manner.

In an article for American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide from Colonial Times to the Present, the reviewer Daria Donnelly notes that “Different Ways to Pray attends to human landscapes” and that “Nye's attention to the simple acts of human communion wherever and however they occur springs from a generosity and acuity forged by a sense of her own multifaceted...