How to use this Page

Where the Wild Things Are? (New York for "Wild Things Week" running cultural, educational and entertainment events in celebration of the premiere. Plus Entertainment Weekly asks what, if any, topics are too explicit for teen fiction) (MediaPost,... Read the rest of this post

Stephen T. Asma is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, where he holds the title of Distinguished Scholar.  His newest book, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters-how they have evolved over time, what functions they serve, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future.  It is with this monstrous perspective (sorry I know it is an awful pun) that Asma looks at Where the Wild Things Are in honor of its release this weekend.

With hindsight it seems fitting that Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1963) first appeared in cultural space somewhere between Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Where the Wild Things Are is a rock’n’roll story, about being misunderstood, rebelling against authority, letting your hair down, and generally indulging in the Dionysian rumpus. It’s not surprising, then, that the new film version (Warner Brothers) is brought to us by skateboarding music-video director Spike Jonze and literary mega-hipster Dave Eggers.

As the movie’s trailer reminds us, “Inside all of us is a wild thing.” And in our therapeutic era, we generally accept that it is good and healthy to visit our wild things –to let them off their chains, let them howl at the moon. You can also taste some of this Romanticism in the recent relish of the Woodstock anniversary, with its celebration of noble primitivism. But the hippy view of “the wild” is quite sunny, whereas Sendak (who lost family during the Holocaust) wanted to acknowledge some of the darker aspects of uncivilized life (even, or especially, through the eyes of a child). Despite these darker notes, however, Where the Wild Things Are still affirms the idea that danger, at least in small doses, is good for you. And this latest fascination with beasties, together with the approach of Halloween, reminds us that we have a love/hate relationship with monsters generally. We are simultaneously attracted and repulsed by them.

Sendak’s monsters are just repulsive enough to be alien, foreign, and mysterious, but they’re also vaguely cute and familiar enough for us to identify with them and recognize our emotional selves in them. Sendak claimed in later interviews that the monsters were based loosely on his boyhood perceptions of his frightening aunts and uncles. Like a distant relation, our uncanny monsters are alien aspects of our own identity –they are parts of who we are, unfamiliar aspects of our psyches. This common way to read monsters –as primitive, uncivilized versions of ourselves –is obvious in Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or the forthcoming Universal Pictures remake The Wolfman, starring Anthony Hopkins and Benicio del Toro. Monster stories have a cathartic function, in the sense that they give our tamed, repressed impulses a brief holiday of Bacchanalian revelry. And after these virtual trips to our own hearts of darkness, we can better return to our everyday social world of compromise, accommodation, and compliance. On this account, the monster story is the favorite genre of our reptilian brains (the real home where the wild things are).

However, every era has its own uses and abuses of monsters. The lesson of Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example, is often taken as a liberal lesson in tolerance: we as a society must not create outcasts, or persecute those who are different. Or consider that the medieval mind was obsessed with giants and mythical creatures as God’s punishments for the sin of pride. And the medieval period also began the Church’s long fascination with demon possession. For the Greeks and Romans, monsters were prodigies –warnings of impending disaster.

Besides the cuddly monsters of Where the Wild Things Are, our present day fascination seems dominated by zombies, vampires, and serial killers. Why are we so entranced by these specific creatures –why do we love to hate them?

Not only are there more zombies around these days, but they seem to be getting faster and more aggressive. Gone are the slow lumbering goons of the George Romero-era zombies, and in their stead we have lightning fast undead predators. Zombies, just like vampires, serial killers and most other monsters are terrifying because you cannot really reason with them. Unlike your other enemies, you cannot appeal to monsters to recognize that you’re a good hearted person, or you’ve got kids, or you really understand their pain, or you only want to understand them in the name of science. They’ll pummel you and eat you anyway. There’s not much common ground, in terms of rationality or emotional solidarity. One suspects there is a link between a decade of American fear of terrorists, and a rise in zombie monsters that do not respond to negotiation.

But zombies also have unique qualities that trigger the dynamic of love/hate, attraction/repulsion. Everybody wants to live forever. That’s a given. If you can’t remember wanting to live forever, then you’re probably a successful and functional adult. But the inner narcissist –the one that thinks he’s God and wants to live forever –is still in you somewhere, buried deep. The zombie, like the vampire, is a kind of immortal: chop his leg off, he’s still coming; blow a hole in his chest, he’s still coming. His life span is indefinite and he’s indestructible. So the little narcissist inside us really likes the immortal aspect of the zombie and the vampire. We unconsciously crave that kind of staying power and durability, but our narcissistic desire to cheat death is impossible to sustain in the face of mature experience. Reality regularly reminds us, as we are growing up, that we will not cheat death. No one actually cheats death. To carry on in the fantasy world of the narcissistic inner-child is impossible given the brute facts of our animal mortality. So the universal urge to live forever must be repressed, as we grow up. This repression means that the desire must be transformed from positive to negative –from something we like, to something disgusting (just like in potty training).

We love to hate zombies because they simultaneously manifest our craving for immortality, and our more mature realization that the flesh always decays. As “living dead,” all zombies elicit those conflicting impulses in our psyche. The more disgusting they are, the more we are reminded of our inevitable decomposition, but the more they keep getting up and chasing, the more we are delighted by the promise of immortality. The psyche seems to carry out an unconscious vacillation: the zombies live on forever, those lucky sods, but wait…they’re disgusting and repellent and…and…run!

Vampires are a much more glamorized and sexualized version of the attraction/repulsion dynamic. From Polidori’s original Vampyre, to Stoker’s Dracula, to today’s teen vampires of Twilight, the blood drinkers are, generally speaking, totally hot. The play of sexual taboos in vampire stories is well appreciated. But in addition to the always titillating presence of neck-kissing and the exchange of bodily fluids, we have to recognize that vampires are romantic monsters. They are incarnations of the irresistible but damaging femme fatal for boys, and the “bad boy” or cad for girls. A vampire is frequently an archetype of the charismatic, handsome, man, who seduces women by his very indifference toward them. Women find him alluring and seek chase, only to discover too late that they are broken upon his heartless unmovable nature. The vampire holds out the promise of love, but alas lacks even humanity.

Vampires and zombies share another well-spring of horror: you could easily become one. You or your loved one is just a little bite away from contracting the disease. In the age of AIDS, swine flu, SARS, and myriad pandemic anxieties, it’s easy to see why monsters who transmit their monstrosity through bites (both sexual and gustatory) are especially frightening. In the medieval mind, monsters and demons were metaphysically different from you and I, and in the unlikely event that you were transformed into one you could be sure it was the result of serious sin. Nowadays, however, casual, accidental contact can make you “one of them.”

One suspects that losing one’s humanity, or becoming one of them, is also at play in our dread fascination with serial killers –real and imagined monsters. We have extensive media coverage, and corresponding public appetite, for real serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, as well as the popular fictional characters Norman Bates, Sweeney Todd, Hannibal Lecter, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, Michael Myers, and so on. Why are so many of us repelled, disgusted, and morally outraged, but also willing to lay out cash to see psychotic murderers hang people on meat hooks, sever limbs, and of course eat their innocent victims?

Before the 1950s, very few people would have suggested that a serial killer was anything like you, or I, or churchgoing folks. And yet, now it is commonplace for people to think of psychopaths as just slight (albeit horrifying) deviations on the otherwise normal brain or psyche. A murdering psychopath is not a demon-possessed creature or an offspring of Cain, but a guy who failed to develop normal levels of human compassion. Most of us believe that the exact causes of monstrous serial killing will be found eventually in brain science or developmental psychology or some combination, but we don’t think that Gacy, Dahmer, Hannibal Lecter, or Leatherface, are metaphysically different from us. We have secularized the evil of such psychopaths only recently, and maybe this is one reason why we love to hate them.

Just as Sendak’s monsters give us a kind of Rousseauian view of going “back to the wild” (wherein the authentic self is discovered, uncorrupted by society), so too Leatherface and similar monsters of “torture porn” give us a kind of Freudian view of going native. We’re attracted to serial killers because they lack conscience, hurt their enemies with impunity, and feel very little. They do the stuff we might do, if we had not been socialized properly. We’re attracted to their animalistic primitive powers. But we’re simultaneously repulsed by them because they lack the precise qualities that make us human.

If Rousseau and the hippies are right, then our inner primitive monsters will be more like Sendak’s beasties; weird, a little dangerous, but ultimately helpful. If, however, Freud is right about the kinds of monsters inside us, then we shouldn’t go too often or too long to where the wild things are.

Like rock’n’roll, the wild primitivism of monsters is tempered by bourgeois (and simply human) needs for security, safety and stability. Howlin’ Wolf is sanitized into Elvis, the “long haired” Beatles have to wear suits, the mud-soaked Woodstock kids are ready to go home after the weekend, and Sendak’s little “Max” misses his mom and leaves his monsters to return to “his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him, and it was still hot.”

I know where I’m going to be on October 16. You’ll find me in a darkened theater with a buttery bag of popcorn and a coke….  but don’t talk to me until after the credits!

I can hardly wait!

Missed this at the time, but the New Yorker has a short selection from the Dave Eggers novelisation of Where the Wild Things (written after his work on the screenplay). The story, "Max at Sea," is online here and you can also read an interview with Eggers here. Required reading for both my Children's Writing and my Screenwriting students.

Here's a sampling of what he has to say:

The weird thing is that working within an established story was actually kind of liberating. You know the beginning and middle and end, more or less, so there’s less pressure to figure all that out. So it was a matter of probing deeper into who Max is, what he wants, what his life is like at home and at school. And on the island, looking deeper into who the Wild Things are and what they want from Max, his life as their king, and why he leaves. From the beginning, though, Maurice was clear that he didn’t want the movie or the book to be timid adaptations. He wanted us to feel free to push and pull the original story in new directions.

Borders’ Educator Appreciation Week Offers 30% Discount
Through October 7th, current and retired educators can save 30% on in-store purchases for personal or classroom use when they bring proof of educator status.

Don’t read that! The secret lives of book banners
In celebration of Banned Books Week (September 26 through October 3), the Chicago Tribune’s Julia Keller shares her first encounter with banned books.

A rainy National Book Festival whets readers’ appetites
In case you missed last weekend’s National Book Festival, the L.A. Times provides a great recap of the Washington, DC event, which boasted record-breaking attendence.

Kids Paying More Attention to Nonfiction
“Nonfiction is gaining more popularity with younger readers, according to the Children’s Choices Booklist-an annual list in which students read, critique, and vote for their favorite books.”

To help boys, school creates the poster men for reading
A Philadelphia school created the “Real Men Read” campaign to locally address a national concern – boys falling behind academically, particularly in literacy – which is achieving impressive results.

Anderson University to dedicate space for rare children’s books
Anderson University’s rare books collection contains approximately 6,000 books—many of which are first editions—by authors such as A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh), Beatrix Potter (The Tale of Peter Rabbit), and Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are).

FYI: The Sendak-inspired project Terrible Yellow Eyes (previously:) curated by Cory Godbey is making its way to Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA. Selected Wild Thing-themed works by folks like Alberto Cerriteño, Israel Sanchez, Peter de Sève, Alina Chau, and many many more will be on display. The opening is this Friday, September 18th and will even have prizes and giveaways– so California readers, this is an event not to be missed! More details on the TYE blog here.

Posted by Meg Hunt on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Alberto Cerriteno, alina chau, Cory Godbey, gallery nucleus, Illustration, Israel Sanchez, Maurice Sendak, Peter de Sève, Where the Wild Things Are

With the highly anticipated release of Where The Wild Things Are just around the corner, We Love You So has been set up as a way of sharing the varied influences of the film. While it’s fun to read though each post, I especially enjoyed the posting that included this clip of Shel Silverstein performing on the Johnny Cash Show.

(link via grain edit)

Posted by Jared Chapman on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | One comment
Tags: "Shel Silverstein", "We Love You So", Maurice Sendak, Spike Jonze", Where the Wild Things Are

Tiny librarian is hell on wheels
Check out this article (and video) about Beth Hollis, an Akron, Ohio reference librarian Ohio by day and a roller derby dynamo by night.

A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like
Motoko Rich of the New York Times highlights “reading workshop” a experimental teaching approach that lets students pick the books they read.

7,000 Words Are Not Enough
The New Yorker’s Book Bench encourages readers to embrace abandoned vocabulary by visiting Save the Words,  a website that offers visitors a chance to adopt endangered terms.  And to get you started building your vocabuluary, take a look at abecedarian, a great word of the day from Dictonary.com.

Last Chance to Support First Book at dd’s DISCOUNTS
Don’t forget, you have until September 7, to make a donation at the point of sale at dd’s DISCOUNTS locations in CA, TX, AZ and FL, with dd’s DISCOUNTS matching donations, up to $25,000.

Bringing ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ to the Screen
This weekend, The New York Times Magazine features film director Spike Jonze’s career and insights into the making of ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ opening in theatres on October 16.

Enter the Mrs P Children’s writing contest!
MrsP.com is seeking great stories written by children 4 to 13 years old for its first “Be A Famous Writer Contest.” Celebrity judges include Dave Barry and Craig Ferguson, so be sure to enter your child’s story today.

Good Books Don’t Have to Be Hard
An interesting article on “why millions of adults are cheating on the literary novel with the young-adult novel, where the unblushing embrace of storytelling is allowed, even encouraged.”

Thousands of you have already voted and shared the books and memories that made you a reader. Check out some of the great comments we’ve received. Is your favorite book listed?

If not, make sure to vote today and share your story of how you got hooked on reading! We’ll post more comments throughout the next several weeks.

Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary
“It was the first book I could read and understand myself. I grew up in a household of 8 siblings. I would hide in a closet with a flashlight and read an entire chapter.” – Vanessa

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton
“I loved the book, I would have my parents read it over and over until they finally wouldn’t read it any more that day.” – Craig

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
“I just remember the pictures and the little boy seemed unafraid of anything. I really wanted to be Max. Plus, what a cool set of p-j’s!” – Paul

Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne; Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey; and The New Zoo McGroo Zoo
“Sorry!  I could not pick just one.  These three books still bring back fond memories of my room in my grandmother’s house, snuggled in my bed and having an expressive rendition of such old favorites.” – Ellen

Happy Birthday to You by Dr. Seuss
“I got the book in second grade and could read it MYSELF!  Books have always taken me on adventures, allowed me to be someone else and encouraged me to ‘fly.’” – Carolyn

So many great links this week – enjoy!

Twilight at Comic-Con: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Chris Weitz and more introduce New Moon
Twilight fans were in for a treat at last weekend’s Comic-Con in San Diego, as New Moon director Chris Weitz and stars Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart and Ashley Greene participated in a live Q&A. Read part of the conversation using the link above.

Nancy Drew’s Granddaughters
After Nancy Drew was highlighted during Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings, The New York Times asks the question “Who was your Nancy Drew?”

Sendak & Jonze Talk Wild Things
A featurette starring Maurice Sendak and Spike Jonze, talking about the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are movie.

Audience Picks: 100 Best Beach Books Ever
Just in time for the lazy, hazy August days, NPR announces the results of its 100 Best Beach Books Ever poll, which received 136,000 votes from 16,000 listeners. How many on this list have you read?

Eric Carle, Eric Carle and
Book Trailers
Two great posts this week from Elizabeth at PW’s ShelfTalker blog. She shares a great post about “book trailers,” videos that promote books as well as her memories of her encounter with the author in a private tour of his studio and video interview featuring Eric Carle.

The magical, mystical path linking book and reader
The Chicago Tribune’s Julia Keller writes on the paths books take to find their readers.

Stories You Might Find Interesting

• Janni talks about her revision process.
• I’m featured on the Cuppa Jolie Blog in conjunction with the Summer Revision Smackdown.
• Have you heard this? Dave Eggers has taken Maurice Sendak’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are and has written a 300+ page novel! It went from 324 words to 324 pages? Wow! Now that’s a revision
• Read the Fine Print.
• Focus your Picture Book.

Post from: Revision Notes Revise Your Novel! Copyright 2009. Darcy Pattison. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Author’s Guild v. S&S
2. Picture Books: Those Confusing 32 Pages
3. Picture book standards: 32 pages

I love how President Obama and his family help kids get interested in reading by actually reading picture books to children. It’s wonderful!! Know any other famous people or celebrities who encourage literacy? Especially via children’s books? Let me know.

Thanks to @TeachingBooks on Twitter and Lisa Gold: Research Maven for the link.

Candie's Foundation appoints Bristol Palin teen ambassador (for the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. To promote the effort, Palin will attend a town hall meeting. Meanwhile, today Anastasia is attending a panel in D.C. on the rise in the teen... Read the rest of this post

I can't wait until this comes out! I heard about it a while ago and now the trailer is here...October 16th!!! Trailer

Youth brands are more than background noise at SXSW (sponsors for the indie music festival clamor to get noticed by 12,000 wallet wielding attendees with music showcases and free parties. Also, AdRants picks up a discussion on marketers misusing... Read the rest of this post

On Tuesday, I was in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris at the splendid exhibition ‘Babar, Harry Potter et Cie: Livres d’enfants, hier et aujourd’hui’. In one corner a mother was reading to her two children from one of the books left out for sharing. It was Max et les Maximonstres (Where the Wild Things Are). Her intonation was as instantly recognisable as the words – is there really only one way to read that story? She paused where I would pause; her voice rose where mine would; took on a clipped, admonishing tone when Max is sent to bed without any supper, and slowed to trace the wonderful dance of monsters across the page.

A familiar story must always be told in exactly the same way, with the same tone of voice, expression, sound effects, intonation, and pace - children demand it. (Why is there no word for the recipient of reading aloud? Why is there no single word for 'reading aloud'? Does this paucity of the language demonstrate how little we value the activity?) Writing for small children, I always read the text aloud and try to herd the words, sheepdog-style, into the right shape for reading aloud. But it was quite astonishing to find Max read in exactly the same way when the words are different. What a fantastic translator to have accomplished that.

Stories read aloud remain as treasures hoarded in the memory. My Big Daughter is nearly 18, but we can still call up a book from a single phrase, with familiar intonation, that we shared many times years ago. It’s like calling up spirits from the vasty deep – and a frisson of the pleasure of the book can be relived in a moment. She will hate me revealing this, but she only gave up the nightly reading-aloud routine when GCSE revision kept her up later than me. By the end, we were reading Tolstoy, Boccaccio, Voltaire, Fitzgerald, Waugh… and then she took up those authors herself to discover more. We read the whole of LOTR (we did skip the bits in Elvish) and the whole Sherlock Holmes collection (except the one in which he dies, which she couldn’t bear) - those took 18 months each. I still occasionally read to her, especially if she is ill.

She hated GCSE English Literature passionately, which surely demonstrates the massive divide between the education system and creating readers, for she reads anything from picture books to Sartre. She can be reduced to howls of anguish by Small Daughter saying ‘The egg was young…’ (Egg Drop, Minnie Grey) or ‘Je déteste mon bec, je déteste le jaune…’ (Le Toucan Jaloux, Bénédicte Guettier). Surely this is what a reader is, rather than someone who can take a book apart but remain unmoved by it?

I wish I could see step into the future to see what type of readers the two French children from BnF will become. Surely, having been taken to the exhibition at all, they are in the best possible starting position? One of the saddest moments in Michael Rosen's programme Just Read was the little girl Lauren who said she was too big to be read to. No-one is too big to be read to - not even me.

I love Where the Wild Things Are. It scared me a bit as a kid, but I grew into it, and then found myself loving it. Do you like it?

The movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s picture book Where the Wild Things Are has a new release date. The movie, directed by Spike Jonze, will be released October 16, 2009. The voice cast features stars such as Catherine Keener, Benicio Del Toro, Forest Whitaker, Catherine O’Hara, and James Gandolfini.

Thanks to Cynopsis Kids for the info.

Book cover via AmazonThe setting of a picture book is important because it determines much of the illustrations.

Picturebook Settings

When writing for kids, you walk a fine line between what is familiar v. exotic. Kids like the familiarity of neighborhoods, homes and schools. Yet, they also need to have their world expanded and literature is a great way to do that. Try to stretch the setting, yet keep something familiar.

• The Wild Thing, by Maurice Sendak, starts at home, sends the character out for a fantastic visit, then bring him back to the comfort of home again.
• Think of the classic picture book, King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub, by Audrey Wood, which uses the familiar ritual of a nightly bath, but turns it into something exotic.
• Or, turn something exotic into something familiar, as in Thy Friend, Obadiah, by Brinton Turkle, which treats a Quaker family and a historical family as just a normal family.

Suggested Reading for Familiar v. Exotic

• Familiar:
  • School
    Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathman
  • Home (Any suggestions for this one?)
  • Outdoors
    My Friend Rabbit, by Eric Rohmann
• Exotic:
  • Traveling across country:
    The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman by Darcy Pattison
  • Other countries
    The Diary of A Wombat by Jackie French
  • Fantasy settings
    The Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin
• Combination of Familiar and Exotic:
  • 19 Girls and Me by Darcy Pattison (school and imaginative play that takes the kids to exotic spots)
  • Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French (Australia)

NOTE: An exotic setting can’t save a “weak” story; but it might give it an extra edge of uniqueness that helps it work better.
Could Diary of a Wombat have been about a squirrel?

Any other suggested titles?

Book cover via AmazonThe setting of a picture book is important because it determines much of the illustrations.

Picturebook Settings

When writing for kids, you walk a fine line between what is familiar v. exotic. Kids like the familiarity of neighborhoods, homes and schools. Yet, they also need to have their world expanded and literature is a great way to do that. Try to stretch the setting, yet keep something familiar.

• The Wild Thing, by Maurice Sendak, starts at home, sends the character out for a fantastic visit, then bring him back to the comfort of home again.
• Think of the classic picture book, King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub, by Audrey Wood, which uses the familiar ritual of a nightly bath, but turns it into something exotic.
• Or, turn something exotic into something familiar, as in Thy Friend, Obadiah, by Brinton Turkle, which treats a Quaker family and a historical family as just a normal family.

Suggested Reading for Familiar v. Exotic

• Familiar:
  • School
    Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathman
  • Home (Any suggestions for this one?)
  • Outdoors
    My Friend Rabbit, by Eric Rohmann
• Exotic:
  • Traveling across country:
    The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman by Darcy Pattison
  • Other countries
    The Diary of A Wombat by Jackie French
  • Fantasy settings
    The Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin
• Combination of Familiar and Exotic:
  • 19 Girls and Me by Darcy Pattison (school and imaginative play that takes the kids to exotic spots)
  • Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French (Australia)

NOTE: An exotic setting can’t save a “weak” story; but it might give it an extra edge of uniqueness that helps it work better.
Could Diary of a Wombat have been about a squirrel?

Any other suggested titles?

Dave Eggers' adaptation of Maurice Sendak's children's book "Where The Wild Things Are" is not expected until next year, but an apparent screen test circulating online is already drumming up more interest in the Spike Jonze film.

We’re stretching our definition of multicultural just this once to include the imaginary worlds that offer so much creative solace to young children in difficult straits. In Julia Glass’ 2006 novel The Whole World Over, Greenie and Alan are parents of a precocious 4-year-old, George. Set in 2001 as the couple weather a serious marital crisis, the story moves from New York City and Maine to a ranch outside Santa Fe, and back, and throughout, the estranged parents each read to George. Wherever he is, the ritual of choosing from among his treasured favorite books (often subtly appropriate for his immediate situation) gives him security and stability.

Glass even folds a review of Owl at Home into her novel. Greenie is reading to George:
He leaned against her for all five tales, which related the neurotically foolish mishaps of a character who was a literalist yet also a romantic. In Greenie’s favorite, Owl made himself a pot of tear-water tea by thinking up, laboriously, as many sad things as he could: chairs with broken legs, forgotten songs, clocks that had stopped, mornings that no one witnessed because everyone was sleeping. More than sad, they were invisible, neglected, or simply lost to memory.

What better book for a little boy whose mother has just driven across the country from Santa Fe to reconcile with her husband in the intense confusion following 9-11?

Other books read to George in the novel include the Dr. Seuss books and (more…)