7 Questions For: Author Louis Sachar

Newbery Award–winning author Louis Sachar is the creator of the entertaining Marvin Redpost books as well as the much-loved There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, winner of 17 child-voted state awards.

Louis Sachar’s book Holes, winner of the 1999 Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, is also an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, an ALA Quick Pick, an ALA Notable Book, and was made into a major motion picture.

After graduating high school, Sachar attended Antioch College for a semester before transferring to University of California, Berkeley, during which time he began helping at an elementary school in return for college credit. Sachar later recalled,

“I thought it over and decided it was a pretty good deal. College credits, no homework, no term papers, no tests, all I had to do was help out in a second/third grade class at Hillside Elementary School. Besides helping out in a classroom, I also became the Noontime Supervisor, or 'Louis the Yard Teacher' as I was known to the kids. It became my favorite college class, and a life changing experience.”

Sachar graduated from UC Berkeley in 1976 with a degree in Economics, and began working on Sideways Stories From Wayside School, a children's book set at an elementary school with supernatural elements. Although the book's students were named after children from Hillside and there is a presumably autobiographical character named "Louis the Yard Teacher," Sachar has said that he draws very little from personal experience, explaining that "....my personal experiences are kind of boring. I have to make up what I put in my books."

Sachar wrote the book at night over the course of nine months, during which he worked during the day in a Connecticut sweater warehouse. After being fired from the warehouse, Sachar decided to go to law school, around which time Sideways Stories From Wayside School was accepted for publication. The book was released in 1978; though it was not widely distributed and subsequently did not sell very well, Sachar began to accumulate a fan base among young readers.[6] Sachar graduated from University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1980 and did part-time legal work while continuing to write children's books. By 1989, his books were selling well enough that Sachar was able to begin writing full-time.

Sachar married Carla Askew, an elementary school counselor, in 1985. They live in Austin, Texas, and have a daughter, Sherre, born January 19, 1987. Sachar has mentioned both his wife and daughter in his books; Carla was the inspiration for the counselor in There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom (1988), and Stanley's lawyer in Holes.

When asked about whether he thought children have changed over the years, Sachar responded: "I've actually been writing since 1976, and my first book is still in print and doing very well. ... I don't think kids have changed."

Click here to read my review of Fuzzy Mud

Click here to read my review of Holes.

And now Louis Sachar faces the 7 Questions:


Question Seven: What are your top three favorite books?

The Unconsoled -- Kazuo Ishaguro
East of Eden  -- John Steinbeck
Clockers  -- Richard Price.

If I answered this at a different time or day, I probably would have chosen three others.

Question Six: How much time do you spend each week writing? Reading?

Maybe ten hours writing. Some weeks very little reading. Others, quite a bit.

Question Five: What was the path that led you to publication?

During my last year of college, for an easy 3 units, I signed up to be a teacher's aide at a nearby elementary school.  It turned out to be my favorite class.  I loved being with the kids.  When I graduated, I decided to try writing a book about the kids I knew there.  That became Sideways Stories From Wayside School.

I mailed the manuscript to ten different publishers. One accepted it.

Question Four: Do you believe writers are born, taught or both? Which was true for you?

I think writers mostly teach themselves. It takes a lot of perseverance and a love of literature. I suppose writers are born with certain qualities that, if exposed to good writing, would choose to pursue it for themselves.


Question Three: What is your favorite thing about writing? What is your least favorite thing?

The freedom to let a story take me places I never expected; the way characters become real to me.

Least favorite thing?  The isolation. I have worked on plays and a movie, and I enjoyed the collaboration with other talented people. I don't have that when writing novels.  Yes, I enjoy working with an editor but it's not the same thing.

Question Two: What one bit of wisdom would you impart to an aspiring writer? (feel free to include as many other bits of wisdom as you like)

Don't expect too much from yourself. The first draft is always awful. The fun part is after the first draft is written, when you begin the process of turning it into something. My second drafts are also awful.  It's not until I get to the third or fourth draft of a book that I start to think it might be good.

Question One: If you could have lunch with any writer, living or dead, who would it be? Why?

Kazuo Ishaguro.  He's always been one of my favorite writers, and I am thrilled that he just won the Nobel Prize.

louissachar.com

Book Review: MY TEACHER IS AN ALIEN by Bruce Coville

First Paragraph(s): “Hey, Geekoid!” yelled Duncan Dougal as he snatched Peter Thompson’s book out of his hand. “Why do you read so much? Don’t you know how to watch TV?”
Poor Peter. I could see that he wanted to grab the book back from Duncan. But I also knew that if he tried, Duncan would cream him. 
Sometimes I wonder if Duncan’s mother dropped him on his head when he was a baby. I mean, something must have made him decide to spend his life making other people miserable. Otherwise why would he spend so much of his time picking on a kid like Peter Thompson? Peter never bothers anyone. Heck, the only thing he really wants is to be left alone so he can read whatever book he has his nose stuck in at the moment. 
That doesn’t seem like too much to ask to me. But Duncan takes Peter’s reading as a personal insult.

Hi there, Esteemed Reader. I'm going to call this a book of the week review even though I haven't reviewed a book here since almost exactly one year ago:) Truthfully, I've been turning down requests for book reviews because typically guest posts written by writers more talented than yours truly have drawn greater traffic, with the notable exception of reviews of classic books. The interwebs are drawn to this review of Bunnicula for some reason, and this review of The Indian in the Cupboard gets more traffic than this way more interesting interview with its author. I don't get it and I don't pretend to, but if Esteemed Reader's happy, I'm happy.

As an experiment, we're going to try a few "book of the week" reviews in the coming weeks. I never want to become complacent. If enough Esteemed Readers show me they like these reviews, I'm happy to write more of them. If y'all prefer the guest posts, that works too, and we'll have some more interviews with literary agents and other publishing professionals in the near future. Most exciting of all, author Bruce Coville will be here on Thursday to face the 7 Questions for writers. It's going to be a great week!

My Teacher is an Alien is an absolute classic of middle grade fiction and any ninjas wishing to write middle grade science fiction and/or horror should absolutely give it its due consideration. This gem was published in the eighties, which is why I have a cherished childhood memory of having to wait for agonizing weeks for the library's copy to be made available to me. Every student in my class was on the waiting list to check it out and so I saw that super scary cover staring back at me from multiple desks before I got my turn.

It's a mystery to me why some books become classics (why do people of sound mind read James Joyce when a gun isn't pressed against their head!?!), but there's no mystery here. My Teacher is an Alien is a killer concept well executed, which seems simple enough, but if it were every writer would be doing it every book:) The title beautifully lays out the conflict that's to be the subject of the story and it's exciting stuff. Between the title and one of the finest covers in all of middle grade history, I was invested in the book as a child before the first page and these many years later, children are still being intrigued.

More than a killer concept, Coville's is a great story well told, which is why it remains popular when so many other books with concepts and covers almost as good have gone the way of cassette tapes. Because the characters are well-defined and the concept is universal (who hasn't suspected at least one of their teachers of being an alien?), this story hardly seems to have aged and I enjoyed it as an adult as much as I once did as a child, even if I found myself muttering "or watch it on YouTube" here:

We were doing the greatest march of all time, “The Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Philip Sousa. (If you don’t know it, you should go to your library and get a record of it so you can listen to it. It’s great.)

And okay, I did wonder how it might change things if any of the students in Mr. Smith's class had a smart phone to film him transitioning to the alien Broxholm (such a wonderful name) to live stream to social media. Of course, UFO videos are everywhere online and folks who believe there's something to them like your beloved ninja are still thought to be kooks (it's fake news as our 100% trustworthy government would tell us if they knew of flying saucers!), so maybe a smart phone wouldn't make much difference.

My Teacher is an Alien is a short book that can be knocked out in a couple bus rides, or one long one, which has no doubt also contributed to its longevity. Because it's short and funny, it appears to have been written effortlessly, as the best fiction so often does, but look again. You long-term Esteemed Readers know I don't really review books so much as dissect them a bit, so let's start with that opening. Look up at the first paragraph at the top of this review once again.

Right away, Coville establishes the tone of his story and assures the reader that this book is going to concern itself with 6th graders and their conflicts. Peter Thompson has our sympathies and Duncan Dougal does not (or do you root for bullies, Esteemed Reader?). More over, the reason Peter is being bullied is because he likes to read, which will probably appeal to Coville's reader, who we know is reading at least one book:)

I'll never forget a critique session I participated in with an author who shall remain nameless who'd written a story about a protagonist who hated books. When the character didn't later reverse this position (it wasn't central to the plot), I and my other critique partners savaged the author and our number one critique was that although a main character in a book doesn't have to like to read, it's probably not a bad idea if she does. Your book has to appeal to readers and people who like books, so why not assure them that it's good that they're reading (link to your back catalog!). Bruce Coville knows what side his bread is buttered on:

I slid down the wall and sat beside him. He acted as if he didn’t notice me. Or maybe he really didn’t. He was one of those kids who could get so wrapped up in a book it would take a bomb to break his attention. I hated to interrupt him. Peter always seemed a little unhappy to me, like he understood that he just didn’t fit in with the rest of us. The only thing I knew that made him happy was reading science fiction. He always had a book hidden behind his school book. The neat thing was, it didn’t make any difference, because he was so bright that whenever the teacher asked him a question, he always knew the answer. I could never figure out why they wouldn’t just leave him alone and let him read. But that’s the way school is, I guess.

What really makes this opening work better than other middle grade books that begin with a bully menacing a likable character (including Banneker Bones and the Giant Robot Bees) is that the point of this exchange is not primarily to introduce Peter or Duncan, though it does accomplish this, but to characterize our main protagonist, who is neither boy, but a particularly tough girl named Susan Simmons:

Peter had absolutely no idea how to deal with a creep like Duncan. Actually, neither did I. If I did, I would have stopped him. But the one time I had tried to come between Duncan and Peter, I ended up with a black eye myself.
Duncan claimed it was an accident, of course. “Susan just jumped right in front of my fist,” he said as if I was the one who had done something wrong. To tell you the truth, I think Duncan punched me on purpose. Most guys wouldn’t hit a girl. But Duncan doesn’t mind. It was his way of warning me to keep my nose out of his business.
As I watched Duncan squinting down at Peter, it occurred to me that sixth grade can be a dangerous place if you don’t watch out.

Our characters established, we move right along at breakneck speed because something is amiss at Kennituck Falls Elementary. I don't want to spoil it for you, but one of the teachers may be... wait for it... an alien! The reader knows something is up with the strange Mr. Smith, who does not care one bit for music or laughter or fun. He bans "radios and tape players" and presumably 8-tracks from the playground:) Coville gives us plenty of evidence that the new teacher who's replaced Ms. Schwartz is other worldly: 

Later, I remembered that he was looking straight at the sun. But right then I was too worried about the note to pay attention to the fact that what he was doing should have burned out his eyeballs.

But Coville doesn't drag things out. There's some drama involving a passed note that escalates until Susan is given a plausible reason to follow Mr. Smith home, where she discovers this in chapter four:

When I finally got up the nerve to sneak a look around the bottom edge of the door, I saw Mr. Smith sitting at a little makeup table, looking in a mirror. Stacy was right. The man really was handsome. He had a long, lean face with a square jaw, a straight nose, and cheekbones to die for. Only it was a fake. As I watched, Mr. Smith pressed his fingers against the bottom of his eyes. Suddenly he ran his fingertips to the sides of his head, grabbed his ears, and started peeling off his face!

Again, surprise, my teacher, as it turns out, is an alien (gasps and clutches pearls). Even if I inserted more passages from the text and walked you through the full events of each of the first four chapters, I wouldn't be telling you much that you don't already know from the title, the cover, and the back blurb. Coville can't not tell this part of the story, the way Michael Chrichton dutifully pretends there's a mystery as to what sort of animals are at Jurassic Park prior to the arrival of the heroes on Isla Nublar. Corville's establishing of the premise is absolutely exciting and fun, but there are 21 chapters here and the first four alone do not a story make.

What matters most is that by the time we get to the end of chapter four, we care about Susan Simmons and Peter Thompson and that we've bought into their situation. The story here is not that Mr. Smith is an alien, it's what Susan and later (despite what the cover would have you believe) Peter are going to do once they discover their teacher is an alien. Who can they tell? Who would believe them? And if no one believes them, who will stop Broxholm if they don't stop him? Does he need to be stopped?

I believe the rule of any great story is that a writer must begin with a great premise and build outward. Corville's prose is tight and fun and I laughed a lot along the way, especially toward the end as I'd forgotten how our heroes foil... nope, I best not say too much and spoil the story for the uninitiated.

But do take notice that Coville eschews most description save for what readers need to follow the story. There are no long, overly-written descriptions of fields of symbolically purple flowers here because Coville keeps things moving. And every chapters ends with either a cliffhanger or a question as to what will happen next, making it impossible for young readers to put down the book in favor of their intertelevision console controller:). Here's one of my favorite chapter endings that would be at home in a Stephen King novel:

“Oh, all right,” said Peter. He opened the door and started up the stairway. When he got about halfway up the stairs his head passed the level of the attic floor. I was walking so close that I bumped into him when he stopped. 
“What is it?” I whispered. When he didn’t answer me, I pushed my way up beside him and cried out in horror.

And so, once again, Esteemed Reader, upon revisiting an old favorite novel, I discover that the secret to creating a classic is a good story well told. Bruce Coville makes it look easy, but it's far from it. Rereading My Teacher is an Alien was like visiting with a childhood friend. If you've never read it, pick it up this minute, and if you haven't read it in the last five years, it's probably time for a refresher. As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from My Teacher is an Alien:

I sank back into my seat. Sixth grade was going bad faster than a dead fish on a hot day.

Of course, once we were inside, I had to go to the nurse’s office—even though I actually felt perfectly fine. Mrs. Glacka told me to lie down. I wasn’t surprised. That was her basic cure for everything.

I was as nervous as a marshmallow at a bonfire.

“An alien!” said Peter, his voice filled with awe. “Mr. Smith is an alien! We’re not alone!” 
“What are you talking about?” I hissed. 
“Intelligent aliens. Mankind is not alone in the universe.” 
“Well, I’m feeling pretty alone right now,” I said. “Are you going to help me or not?”

After supper I slipped out of bed and went to see my father. He was sitting in his den, building a model of the Empire State Building out of toothpicks. That’s his hobby—making famous buildings with toothpicks. If you ask me, it’s pretty weird. But it keeps him happy, which is more than I can say for most adults I know. So I guess I shouldn’t complain.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own. 

Book Review: THE CITY OF EMBER by Jeanne Duprau

First Paragraph(s): When the city of Ember was just built and not yet inhabited, the chief builder and the assistant builder, both of them weary, sat down to speak of the future. 
“They must not leave the city for at least two hundred years,” said the chief builder. “Or perhaps two hundred and twenty.” 
“Is that long enough?” asked his assistant. 
“It should be. We can’t know for sure.” 
“And when the time comes,” said the assistant, “how will they know what to do?” 
“We’ll provide them with instructions, of course,” the chief builder replied. 
“But who will keep the instructions? Who can we trust to keep them safe and secret all that time?”
“The mayor of the city will keep the instructions,” said the chief builder. “We’ll put them in a box with a timed lock, set to open on the proper date.” 
“And will we tell the mayor what’s in the box?” the assistant asked. 
“No, just that it’s information they won’t need and must not see until the box opens of its own accord.” 
“So the first mayor will pass the box to the next mayor, and that one to the next, and so on down through the years, all of them keeping it secret, all that time?” 
“What else can we do?” asked the chief builder. “Nothing about this endeavor is certain. There may be no one left in the city by then or no safe place for them to come back to.”


What a rare treat this week's book is, Esteemed Reader. If you haven't read The City of Ember, drop whatever lesser book you're currently reading (unless it's mine) and pick up this one (or switch files in your ereader). I haven't been reviewing many books as of late due to my fiction workload, but I've been meaning to review The City of Ember for years as I consider it to be a modern classic and this seems like a good week to do it as author Jeanne DuPrau will be here to Thursday to face the 7 Questions ***does this-blog-rocks-so-hard happy dance***.

Let's start with that opening above as it is just a red-hot hook. Jaws couldn't get free of that bad boy and I would be shocked to ever encounter a reader who read those paragraphs and was capable of not devouring the rest of the book. A creative writing professor drilled into my head that suspense is created by an author revealing information rather than withholding it, and after four years of him hissing it at me every time he saw me, I came to accept that truth. But it's a delicate balance that when done right is the first season of Lost and when done wrong is the fifth season:)

It is inarguable that Duprau hooks her reader by revealing that the citizens of The City of Ember are forced to live there for 200-220 years, but you'll note she withholds telling us why. And she masterfully opens the story of the citizens of this underground city in its 241st year, which is suspenseful because she revealed the city is built to be inhabited for 220 years. This book has several wonderful characters we'll talk about in just a moment, but the title character is the city itself:

In the city of Ember, the sky was always dark. The only light came from great flood lamps mounted on the buildings and at the tops of poles in the middle of the larger squares. When the lights were on, they cast a yellowish glow over the streets; people walking by threw long shadows that shortened and then stretched out again. When the lights were off, as they were between nine at night and six in the morning, the city was so dark that people might as well have been wearing blindfolds.
Sometimes darkness fell in the middle of the day. The city of Ember was old, and everything in it, including the power lines, was in need of repair. So now and then the lights would flicker and go out. These were terrible moments for the people of Ember. As they came to a halt in the middle of the street or stood stock-still in their houses, afraid to move in the utter blackness, they were reminded of something they preferred not to think about: that someday the lights of the city might go out and never come back on.

When I read Wool by our old friend Hugh Howey, I found myself thinking of The City of Ember, and the first time I read The City of Ember, I found myself thinking of the underground city in Derinkuyu, Turkey, and it occurs to me that there is likely room in the genre of underground city stories for a few more entries, so I might eventually try one myself. In rereading the book in preparation for this review, I was reminded of The Giver by our other old friend Lois Lowry. I'm not really sure what my point is here other than I've read a lot of awesome books by a lot of awesome writers and God bless America that we have so many great books at our disposal:)

Ember is a fantastic setting for a story as it's inherently interesting, made more so by the fact that it's got a built-in ticking clock, but for all that, it's still just a setting. I'd wager that if Duprau messed up every other element of this novel (not likely as talented writers have a vexing way of being talented in multiple areas so that the rest of us can only wish we had their ability), the setting and the premise alone would still have moved books and kept me reading to at least the 50% point if not 70:)

But Duprau has given us multiple characters to root for and at least one to actively root against:) Before I tell you about them, there's one more element I want to point out, and this is the main thing that reminded me of The Giver. What makes for a good dystopian novel is the details of how the society is arranged. If you're writing a dystopian novel for the middle grade or young adult market, you could do worse than adding a detail such as this:

Grown people did their work, and younger people, until they reached the age of twelve, went to school. On the last day of their final year, which was called Assignment Day, they were given jobs to do.

I'll tell you an open secret: middle grade readers dream of being given adult responsibility and obtaining adult autonomy and privilege, mostly because they haven't thought it through (suckers). Is it too late to let my parents pay the mortgage so I can read books all day? But I say this with the advantage of hindsight. I couldn't wait to grow up when I was the appropriate age for this story and starting my adult career at age 12 would've sounded like Heaven (does Ember have any openings for famous authors who spend their days autographing books and eating chocolate?). 

Unfortunately, the assignments are not given to our 12-year-old heroes by a wise and all-seeing wizard's hat, but appointed by a disinterested mayor who we'll learn later in the story is the last person who should be trusted with the future of young people. An arbitrary appointment might be an unpleasant one a 12-year-old could be saddled with for life. I might argue that's in some ways still fairer than our current real-life system of promising low-income kids they can grow up to be anything they want and then assuring them it's their character failure when they don't.

But let's stick to the story. In The City of Ember, our heroine Lina Mayfleet has been stuck with an assignment of working in the Pipeworks, which is to say she's a plumber/sewer technician. Duprau uses this opportunity not to build the character of Lina, which she'll be doing for most of the novel's length, but to build the character of our secondary protagonist, Doon Harrow, who stands up Katniss-Everdeen style and volunteers to take Lina's position. 

In fact, despite a bit of vanity, Doon Harrow is such the classic hero archetype, one almost wonders why some editor didn't insist he be made the main protagonist. Consider the following passages:

With wrenches, hammers, washers, and black goop, they did this, getting soaked in the process. It took them most of the morning and proved to Doon that the city was in even worse shape than he’d suspected. Not only were the lights about to fail and the supplies about to run out, but the water system was breaking down. The whole city was crumbling, and what was anyone doing about it?

All Doon’s life, his father had been saying to him, “You’re a good boy and a smart boy. You’ll do grand things someday, I know you will.” But Doon hadn’t done much that was grand so far. He ached to do something truly important, like finding the secret of electricity, and, as his father watched, be rewarded for his achievement. The size of the reward didn’t matter. A small certificate would do, or maybe a badge to sew on his jacket.

“Maybe,” said his father, “you’ll find some interesting new bugs in the Pipeworks.” “Maybe,” said Doon. But to himself he said, No, that’s not enough. I can’t go plodding around the Pipeworks, stopping up leaks, looking for bugs, and pretending there’s no emergency. I have to find something important down there, something that’s going to help. I have to. I just have to.

Some writers may not understand why Doon isn't the main hero, but not me. I'm the guy who wrote Banneker Bones and the Giant Robot Bees from the perspective not of the hero, but of the sidekick. I get it. Doon is a fine character, but he's more difficult to relate to than Lina Mayfleet.

Lina is our way in to The City of Ember. Presumably, no one presently reading the book has been forced to live in an underground city (readers weathering a future resulting from a President Trump are exempt from this assumption). Lina is far more relatable to the average reader. If I project myself into this story, which is a natural part of the reading experience, I find it more difficult to relate to Doon than to Lina who has an artistic sensibility. Has there ever been a more apt description of this sensibility than the following:

What would she draw? Taking hold of a pencil was like opening a tap inside her mind through which her imagination flowed. She could feel the pictures ready to come out. It was a sort of pressure, like water in a pipe. She always thought she would draw something wonderful, but what she actually drew never quite matched the feeling. It was like when she tried to tell a dream—the words never really captured how it felt.

Lina is relatable not only because she has the capacity to imagine a world beyond the closed-off city of Ember, but because of the details of who she is. She may not be quite as passionate as Doon in his singular desire to heroically save the city, but she takes the same risks he does, and I say that makes her the same amount of hero. 

But Lina has a senile grandmother and a younger sister named Poppy to worry about. And what of her parents? I'm sorry, Esteemed Reader, is this your first middle grade novel:) Parents pose too many plot complications. Tragically, but also conveniently from a writer's perspective, Lina has been orphaned just as the best middle grade protagonists so often are. And I'm not one for spoilers, but don't get too attached to grandma.

And Lina, like the best protagonists, is imperfect, making her all the more relatable. Who among us can't relate to poor Lina, who when she spends money that should go to groceries for her grandmother and little sister, instead follows her artistic passion:

Later, in her bedroom, with Poppy asleep, she took the two colored pencils from her pocket. They were not quite as beautiful as they had been. When she held them, she remembered the powerful wanting she had felt in that dusty store, and the feeling of it was mixed up with fear and shame and darkness.

As usual, I see we're running long, so it's about to time to call it a review. In summation, a great premise with an outstanding setting with the addition of well-developed characters make for a modern classic. Jeanne Duprau makes this look easy, but I know from experience that it's anything but. If you aspire to write great fiction (and what are you doing here otherwise) or if you're just looking for a great read, add The City of Ember to the top of your reading list.

As we'll learn on Thursday when Jeanne Duprau is here to face the 7 Questions, she is quite the garden  enthusiast. Knowing that makes well-written description of vegetation all the more noticeable:

On the days when she’d come here with her father, Lina had spent hours wandering along the gravel paths that ran between the vegetable beds, sniffing the leaves, poking her fingers into the dirt, and learning to tell the plants apart by their look and smell. There were the beans and peas with their curly tendrils, the dark green spinach, the ruffled lettuce, and the hard, pale green cabbages, some of them as big as a newborn baby’s head. What she loved best was to rub the leaves of the tomato plant between her fingers and breathe in their pungent, powdery smell.

As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from The City of Ember:


He was a tall man, bald as a peeled potato, with a high forehead and a long chin.

"The main thing is to pay attention. Pay close attention to everything, notice what no one else notices. Then you’ll know what no one else knows, and that’s always useful.”

“What I mean is,” she said finally, “something is going on that we don’t understand. They say the Builders made the city. But who made the Builders? Who made us? I think the answer must be somewhere outside of Ember.”

“How could we have seen anyone? The lights were out,” said Nammy Proggs, a tiny old woman whose back was so bent that she had to twist her head sideways to look up.

It seemed to Lina that Lizzie was like a clock wound too tightly and running too fast. She’d always been a little this way, but today she was more so than ever. Her gaze skipped from one spot to another, her fingers twiddled with the edge of her shirt. She looked paler than usual, too. Her freckles stood out like little smudges of dirt on her nose.

At the north end of Harken Square stood a circle of Believers, clapping their hands and singing one of their songs. Lately they seemed to be singing more loudly and cheerfully than ever. Their voices were shrill. “Coming soon to save us!” they wailed. “Happy, happy day!”

She set her pencil down for a moment and studied what she’d done. It was time to fill in the sky. In the pictures she’d done with regular pencils, the sky was its true color, black. But this time she made it blue, since she was using her blue pencil. Methodically, as Poppy scratched and scribbled beside her, Lina colored in the space above the buildings, her pencil moving back and forth in short lines, until the entire sky was blue. She sat back and looked at her picture. Wouldn’t it be strange, she thought, to have a blue sky? But she liked the way it looked. It would be beautiful—a blue sky.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own. 

Book Review: TIGER, TIGER by Lynne Reid Banks

First Paragraph: THE TWO TIGER CUBS, romping in the jungle undergrowth near their den, prick up their ears. 

Lynne Reid Banks will be here Thursday to face the 7 Questions.

Esteemed Reader, it's been amazing how regularly we've been able to have the Ninja's childhood heroes appear at this blog, and this week is a very special one for me. I've been trading emails with Lynne Reid Banks and I have to say, the experience has been surreal. I read all The Indian in the Cupboard books when I was a wee Ninja and loved them all. I've felt about chatting with Lynne Reid Banks the way I suppose a modern fourth grader might feel if he grew up to chat with J.K. Rowling. 

She read my review of The Indian in the Cupboard, which I posted back on August 10th, 2010  It was one of my first classic Book of the Week reviews and when I wrote it I had no idea Lynne Reid Banks might actually read it! Once in a while, life is just too good, and being able to tell my favorite authors how much I love her books is a thrilling experience I highly recommend having:) Her interview is charming and very, very funny, and you don't want to miss it as posting it will forever stand out in my memory as one of my proudest moments as a blogger.

Today, however, we are discussing another of Banks's classic works. Tiger, Tiger is historical fiction that while written with younger readers in mind, like the best middle grade works, is a book meant to be enjoyed by adults as well. The trick, as always, is a good story well-told, and content that would be of interest to any reader at any stage in their life. 

It's obvious Banks means for children to read her book as she slows down for them on occasion:

To launch the entertainment, two tall, splendid gladiators were set to fight, one armed with a sword and the other with a net and a trident—a fork with spiked tines and a long handle.

Yet, for passages such as the one above, where definitions are made explicit for readers, what I admire most about this book is that it does not talk down to the reader. As is characteristic of her writing, Banks keeps the pace moving forward. She presents aspects of history, the relevant information the reader must know, and goes on with the story with remarkable speed. 

And Tiger, Tiger contains a lot of complex themes and ideas. It's an epic tale of the Roman Empire, the beginnings of the Christian church (not exactly in favor of it), animal and women's rights, and true-to-life historical depiction. A lesser writer might've taken 600 pages to tell this story, but Banks trusts her reader to be smart enough to keep up with her. She insists children bring themselves to her level rather than lower herself to theirs and the result is wonderful book still being read and celebrated. 

The main story of Tiger, Tiger is of two tiger cubs later named by two-legged masters Brute and Boots. In the opening pages, the cubs are stolen and their mother is killed. They're dragged back to Rome where Brute is trained to be a killer in the coliseum (can you really have a Roman epic without gladiators) and other is de-fanged and fixed like a house pet to live with a princess in her palace. Much of the novel is devoted to the tiger's experiences in their new lives:

On the fairly rare occasions when he was allowed into the arena, Brute killed again—not perhaps with the spectacular ferocity of the first time, but from the point of view of the spectators, satisfactorily enough. He developed, as man-eaters will, a taste for human flesh, which added to his enthusiasm for the occasions when he was allowed to hunt down and eat two-legged prey, and maintained his growing reputation as the sanguinary star of the circus. 

Only for Boots, nothing changed. His fortunate, pampered life continued. Catlike, he was content with enough to eat, comfortable sleeping quarters, and the petting and affection of his mistress. He no longer missed his brother or the beautiful, savage world he had been bred in. If things had continued as they were, he might have lived out this placid, unnatural life until he died of old age. 

But there were cataclysms ahead for him—for all of them.

I love that last line, which, naturally, precedes a break. Banks may be giving a history lesson, but she still keeps the reader hooked and keeps the pages turning first and foremost. Of course, the nice thing about history is its filled with necessary violence and taboos. There is plenty of horrendous violence sprinkled throughout, all of it historically accurate, which also helps to keep pages turning. 

Over the course of the novel, Banks demonstrates her gift for putting the reader in the viewpoint of multiple characters both human and animal. What would it be like to be a nearly 13-year old princess in ancient Rome whom men thought eligible to be married? What pressures would that bring? Here is what the crowd has to say when poor princess Aurelia is dragged at last to the coliseum to witness for the the first time the slaughter of humans and animals for entertainment:

“How lucky we came today! Imagine how excited she must be, to see the circus for the very first time!” Many were remembering their own first visits. There was a general feeling of privilege and rejoicing, as if the daughter of Caesar were passing through a sort of initiation into the glorious state of being a full Roman citizen.

For much of Tiger, Tiger the reader comes to the story from the third person perspective of the tigers. They never talk nor have thoughts that a tiger couldn't conceivably have. Their take on the world around them in unique and interesting, but Banks makes no attempt to personify them. Instead, she presents their world as they would likely perceive it:

The smells were bad because there was no way to bury their scat. And there was the smell of other animals, and their fear. And there was a strange smell they didn't recognize, a salt smell like blood. But it wasn't blood. It was bad being enclosed. All the smells that should have dissipated on the wind were held in, close. Cloying the sensitive nostrils. Choking the breath. Confusing and deceiving, so that the real smells, the smells that mattered, couldn't be found, however often the cubs put up their heads and reached for them, sniffing in the foul darkness.

A coarse, loud voice shouted, “Quiet, you little brute, or I'll give you something to howl for!” The threat in it was unmistakable. The bigger cub urinated with fear, then found a corner, pressed himself tight to the cold wall, and lay down. He didn't sleep. He was too nervous. He shivered and all his striped fur stood on end. There had been something in that voice that filled him with dread.

Ultimately, of course, Tiger, Tiger is more about humans than tigers--nearly all stories written by humans are. By putting us in multiple perspectives, both human and animal, Banks is cultivating in her reader a historical perspective. After all, those who do not lean history are destined to repeat it. By presenting us with characters as they would've likely been in their time and place, we're able to consider who they were and thus who we were:

“All societies have hierarchies,” she was told. “All societies have higher and lower, masters and slaves.” 

“It must be terrible to be a slave!” 

“You must not entertain such thoughts. Waste no pity on slaves. They have no responsibilities, no traditions to maintain, no laws to make and keep. They have no concerns about food and shelter. They only have to do what they're told, and live out their simple lives in peace and order.” 

In the end, Esteemed Reader, isn't gaining perspective why we read stories in the first place? We want to know how we're to live, so we look to stories to teach us. By considering humans through history, we can learn to be better humans now.

Tiger, Tiger is a wonderful tale sure to enthrall readers of all ages and teach them a few things they didn't know before while entertaining them. What more can a reader ask for? As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Tiger, Tiger:

Julius swallowed hard. The pictures in his mind almost unmanned him.

Her mother smiled. “It should, perhaps, but it doesn't. People are bloodthirsty. It's the nature of simple folk. Blood excites them, and they love to be excited. It takes them out of their boring lives.”

...appealed to Aurelia about as strongly as being tied up in the arena and fed to the wild beasts, like those strange, death-inviting Christians

A spear that whistled past him— reminding him of his trainer's proddings—simply enraged him more, so that he pursued the thrower in an avenging bound, and tore out his throat. But after a few minutes of frenzied whirling, pouncing, rending, and clawing, Brute's killing urge left him. He remembered his hunger, lay down—but warily—beside his first victim, and began to eat the man's entrails.

Since he had held her in his arms he ached to hold her again. The little head he had pressed protectively to his chest had left an invisible imprint there that called insistently to be filled.


STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own. 

Book Review: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS by Frank Miller

WARNING: This week’s book is actually edgy YA to full-blown adult and is filled with adult content. It's absolutely not appropriate for younger readers and adults should view it as the equivalent of an ‘R’ rated movie.

Also, this review is a discussion of the full novel and contains all kinds of SPOILERS.

Oh, Esteemed Reader, I'm not sure if I can contain my asploding nerdiness today. I've often wondered how I might answer the 7 Questions I've been bugging other writers with for years now. By far, the hardest of the questions is the first one: What are your top three favorite books? It's a question so cruel I encourage writers to cheat, but if I were answering, there would be no cheating allowed.

Speaking of 7 Questions, we'll be starting up 7 Questions for literary agents again with two agent interviews this week to make up for lost time. I'm going to nerd out today, but Jenny Bent will be here Thursday and John Cusick will be here Saturday. Who loves you, Esteemed Reader?

But we were discussing the dilemma of having only three favorite books to choose. Which three would I choose? How would I choose? I'm certain Watership Down by Richard Adams would make the list, as would The Witches by Roald Dahl. I couldn't possibly forget It by Stephen King (I reread it every couple of years), or The Cider House Rules by John Irving,  or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and in all fairness, I ought to include Story by Robert McKee for the impact that one had on me. And what of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I also reread every few years. And also--no, I'll stop this now or we'll be here all day, but if I've reviewed your book here, rest assured it was the one I was about to say next:)

Esteemed Reader, if I were honest, my greatest love has always been The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, and no listing of my most favorite books would be complete without it. If I so much as glance at a panel from that holy grail of graphic novels, I have to sit down and read the whole thing. I've bought an untold number of copies over the years and when someone tells me they don't care for comics, I give them a copy. In a way, this is sort of cruel. How can anything they'll ever read for the rest of their lives not be a let down after they've read the finest work ever composed by a man (but divinely inspired, I'm sure)?

I know what you're thinking, Esteemed Reader: A comic book? Isn't the Ninja a little old for comic books? Well, one, if you're a writer for the MG or YA market unfamiliar with comics, you're out of touch with an integral part of the culture of your readership. No one complains about me reading books aimed at children, so why shouldn't I read comic books?

Two, this isn't just a comic book (or graphic novel if you prefer), this is a seminal work of American literature. I'm going to spend the rest of this review convincing you that Frank Miller, despite a so far disappointing later career, belongs on the same shelf as Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Poe, and King (arguing that last name is the subject of a later post, but he's our Charles Dickens and folks will still be reading Pet Semmetary long after so many other writers' fiction is forgotten). The Dark Knight Returns is worthy of the same awed study one might give The Great Gatsby.

It's true there's a new animated movie version of The Dark Knight Returns (which is what inspired me to post this review). It's very good, despite leaving out the best lines from the book, which are internal monologue rather than spoken dialogue and would therefore have been somewhat awkward to work into a live-action version. I own the flick and I love it, but it's not the same. As is nearly always the case, the book is better, and the movie is something I enjoy because it enhances the experience of reading the book. So do yourself a favor, Esteemed Reader: if you have any interest in this story, READ it first, then watch the flick.

I will concede one thing, Esteemed Reader, which, if you read this blog regularly, you already know: I'm a Batman junkie. Any writer who includes the Dark Knight in their story has me at hello. I love Batman. I read the comic books. I've read novels, many of them just awful, and enjoyed every one of them. I sat in a theater for nine hours watching Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy (just to be crushed by how bad The Dark Knight Rises sucked--yeah, I said it). I've seen every episode of the old 60’s television series at least twice and I've seen most of The Animated Series. I own over two-hundred Batman action figures and I’m such a fan that I've seen the film, Batman and Robin, widely considered to be one of the worst films ever made (and rightfully so), more than once. 

I'm conceding all this at the top of the review for two reasons: first, to acknowledge that I have more than a little bias on this subject. Second, to prove that when it comes to Batman, I know my stuff.

It’s hard to surprise me with a Batman story— I've read enough of them that I usually know what’s coming before the author does. I've also written over three hundred pages of my own Batman stories (and a knock-off MG novel). So when I say that The Dark Knight Returns is the finest Batman story ever told, believe that that is a statement to which I have given entirely too much thought and much of my misspent youth:) Moreover, The Dark Knight Returns is the greatest comic book ever written (Alan Moore's Watchman and Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead come close, but both must bow before the king).

There are many things that distinguish The Dark Knight Returns from the millions of other comics that have been written, but I want to focus on tone, structure, metaphor, and theme—terms not generally associated with comic books. Before we can talk about any of those things, however, it is perhaps important to discuss the timing of this comic. 

In 1986, comic book sales were in a slump and the predominant public image of Batman was Adam West, an image that had grown stale and tired. In an effort to increase reader involvement, DC comics had allowed fans to vote whether or not to kill a character named Jason Todd, who had replaced Dick Grayson as Robin. The vote to murder the new boy wonder was nearly unanimous by the few fans that bothered to vote and the sales for the issue were dismal. So when Miller approached DC comics in 1985 and asked if they would mind if he tried something new, DC executives didn't feel they had much to loose. Had Miller approached them in another decade when Batman was selling, they most likely wouldn't have allowed him to make such a radical departure.  

The beginning sales for The Dark Knight Returns were slow, but with word of mouth, it went on to become one of the best-selling comic books of all time. More important, many analysts say that Miller single-handedly resurrected Batman and comic books at large. Following the enthusiasm of fans, Warner Brothers threw out a script for a Batman film they had commissioned from Superman screenwriter, Tom Mankiewicz (I've read it and it's very meh), and brought on new writers and dark director Tim Burton to make a film version of Batman that would be similar in tone to Miller’s version of Batman. Without Frank Miller, we would never have gotten the first two Christopher Nolan films, and not just because Batman Begins stole whole sections of Miller's Batman: Year One. 

Quick aside: The Dark Rises sucks not just because the acting is frequently awful (looking at you, Marion Cotillard) and the dialogue is pumped full of awkward exposition, but because it fundamentally misunderstands who Batman is as a character. If you kill Batman's girlfriend, he doesn't quit and cry for seven years. It makes him angrier! And he certainly doesn't quit being Batman and leave the empire to some cop just because a constantly weeping Alfred wants him to settle down. I call bull on that whole movie except Tom Hardy's Bane, who was awesome despite not being Hispanic. 

Here's a link to a tumblr of people and animals dying like Marion Cotillard (the entire internets mock her).

So what is it that makes Miller’s Batman stand out from so many others? The most common response to this question is to site Miller’s extreme departure in tone. Miller’s Gotham City is a dark place, but not an unbelievable one. Gone are the laughable crooks in masks carrying bank bags of loot and saying things like, “Give me all your money, or I’ll pump you full of lead.” The streets of Miller’s Gotham City are populated by pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, street gangs, rapists, and serial killers.

In one memorable panel, a lowlife with a knife pulls an elderly woman into an alley and whispers the chilling words, “HEY, MOMMIE... ...COME IN HERE WHERE ITS WARM. I NEED YOU, MOMMIE. MAKE ME FEEL SAFE. TALK SOFT...” I don't know what he plans to do after saying that, but it can't possibly be less than devastating (don't worry, spoiler, Batman stops him). 

In another sequence, a pimp cuts the face of a prostitute in the back seat of a cab, paying the cab driver to keep quiet as he does so. When Batman arrives on the scene, he beats up the pimp and destroys the cab driver’s payoff money, and while he ensures that the prostitute is safe, he makes no attempt to help her (where are the innocent citizens to sing Batman's praise?). Nearly all the street thugs carry guns, and not just revolvers, but automatic weapons drawn overly large to illustrate the danger they pose in the hands of teenagers, who appear almost unable to lift the firepower they're toting.

Batman himself is dark and bitter and not entirely mentally stable (it's worth noting that Miller was among the first to openly propose a grown man dressed as a bat might not be wholly sane). Batman drinks alcohol, tortures street punks, beats criminals to the point of hospitalization (gunning down one with an automatic weapon, but presumably not killing him), and even appears to have a sexual relationship with a prostitute (named Selina Kyle, naturally). Likewise, we’re treated to a straight-edged Commissioner Gordon rationalizing shooting a seventeen-year-old street punk in the face. Although Batman has rarely been portrayed as dark as in Miller’s version since, his vision of the Dark Knight set the tone for the Batman we are still reading about today—dark, brooding, and outside the law; a far cry from the wham! pow! days of Adam West. 

Merely citing his departure in tone is to do a great disservice to Miller, because he’s not just writing dark for the sake of being dark. The Dark Knight Returns has all the hallmarks of a great work of literature adapted to the world of comic book superheroes. Miller’s true objective in The Dark Knight Returns is not just to revolutionize Batman or to tell a great Batman story, though he accomplishes both things, but to write a biting and relevant piece of social commentary. The closest literary parallel with this comic may be Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with Superman in the role of Tom Sawyer, Batman in the role of Huck Finn, and society as a whole in the role of Jim the slave.

Batman and Superman are America's mythology. Long after the fall of the American empire (it'll never happen, of course, I'm singing Stars and Stripes Forever as I write this, but if it did...), future civilizations piecing together who the Americans were would recognize the import of these characters--why else would there be representations of them literally everywhere? Look down your nose if you will, but Batman has a made a bigger impact on American culture than Jay Gatsby, Holden Caulfield, and Leopold Bloom combined. He's our Sherlock Holmes and Superman is our Hercules, and it is only fitting they have their own epic poem to sing their tale. The Dark Knight Returns is that poem as written in lyric or not, Miller's prose is poetry.

Something that is immediately striking about The Dark Knight Returns is its structure. Miller presents us with Batman at age sixty, returning to his life as a crime fighter after a ten-year hiatus. It's an odd place to begin, so when the great epic is compiled by future generations, they'll need to include Year One. 

Worth noting is the way that not only Batman has changed, but also the way so many other characters, famous to fans of DC comics, have changed as well. And every character introduced in this story has a thematic purpose, from the Joker, who's grown old and passé when compared to modern monsters, to Lana Lang, Superman’s high school girlfriend, who's grown old, fat (it was the 80's and the height of the "no fat chicks" bumper sticker), and bitter, because Lana's lost faith in her Man of Steel. Note that Dick Grayson, a former Robin, has become a politician and no longer wishes to have any contact with Batman.

No review of The Dark Knight Returns would be complete without at least mentioning Carrie Kelley, the first female Robin. Her journey from admirer to partner is exciting and emotional. There's also a "reformed" Harvey Dent, whose infamously bifurcated face has been corrected with plastic surgery so that both sides match (but which side, good or evil, is left for the reader to decide).

And no definitive Batman story would be complete without an appearance by the Joker. No one is more excited about the Dark Knight's return than his greatest nemesis and it's telling that he is in a near catatonic state until Batman reappears and the old clown is given a reason to live again. In a stroke of genius, Miller sets the final showdown between Batman and Joker in "The Tunnel of Love."

The most important character aside from Batman, however, is Superman. Superman is working with the United States government, which Miller goes to great pains to illustrate as corrupt. In fact, in one memorable panel, the American flag transforms into the ‘S’ of Superman’s symbol, as President Reagan orders Superman to Gotham City to personally quarantine Batman and offers him a medal for doing so. 

Much of the comic is devoted to characters on a television screen from ineffective and corrupt political leaders, to psychologists defending the Joker and Two-face, to officials declaring Batman a public menace. The purpose of these broadcasts is to show that it is American society that has become ineffective and corrupt, and Superman becomes the symbol of this. Batman wages a war on crime and Miller paints the US government as placing the rights of criminals and the interests of corporations above the rights of her citizens (where would he get a crazy idea like that?). Batman becomes the antithesis of official America, as represented by Superman.

Miller's story culminates in an all-out battle between Batman and Superman, in which Batman fakes his own death, symbolizing that the time of heroes may be over—at least, as far as those in power are concerned. Before dying, however, Batman says these words to America’s premiere superhero: 

YOU SOLD US OUT, CLARK. YOU GAVE THEM-- THE POWER--THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN OURS. JUST LIKE YOUR PARENTS TAUGHT YOU TO. MY PARENTS... TAUGHT ME A DIFFERENT LESSON... --LYING ON THIS STREET--SHAKING IN DEEP SHOCK-- --DYING FOR NO REASON AT ALL-- --THEY SHOWED ME THAT THE WORLD ONLY MAKES SENSE WHEN YOU FORCE IT TO... 

And with these words (arguably the greatest line every written for Batman), Batman denounces Superman and American society, then fakes his own death to escape, not unlike Huck Finn lighting out for the new territories, ahead of the rest. But the book does not end on an entirely cynical note. In the last panels, we see Batman alive and well, training an army of others, who, like him, have lost faith in convention and feel that they also must take justice in their own hands.

The Dark Knight Returns is being taught in literature classes across the country. By combining classic comic book methods with traditional literary techniques, Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns has ushered in a new breed of novel: the literary graphic novel. The Dark Knight Returns is a groundbreaking achievement that has set the bar higher for all comic books that follow and redefined what is considered to be American literature.

And that's going to do it. If you're still reading, I appreciate you're being patient as I let my full geek out.  Come back Thursday and Saturday. You never know. You might just find the perfect agent to represent your work. And check back in next week when I give you my word as a Ninja, we'll be discussing an honest-to-goodness MIDDLE GRADE book:) I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from The Dark Knight Returns, each of which is tattooed on my heart forever (note, these passages were written to accompany multiple art panels and look a little silly on their own, but I've done my best to type them as they appear in the novel):

Old Bruce Wayne: THE NOSE DIGS UP A CHUNK OF MACADAM. I LOOK AT IT----THEN STRAIGHT INTO THE EYE OF THE SUN. THIS WOULD BE A GOOD DEATH... ...BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Police officer: YOU'RE UNDER ARREST, MISTER. YOU'VE CRIPPLED THAT MAN! Batman: HE'S YOUNG. HE'LL PROBABLY WALK AGAIN. BUT HE'LL STAY SCARED--WON'T YOU PUNK?

Two-face: TAKE A LOOK... HAVE YOUR LAUGH. I'M FIXED ALL RIGHT. AT LEAST... BOTH SIDES MATCH. HAVE YOUR LAUGH, BATMAN--TAKE A LOOK! ...TAKE A LOOK... Batman in response to an image of both sides of Harvey's face being hideous and a bat: ... I SEE... A REFLECTION, HARVEY. A REFLECTION.

Batman to Joker's burning corpse: STOP... ...STOP LAUGHING...

Batman to Superman: --STILL TALKING--KEEP TALKING, CLARK... ...YOU'VE ALWAYS KNOWN JUST WHAT TO SAY. "YES"--YOU ALWAYS SAY YES--TO ANYONE WITH A BADGE--OR A FLAG----THE FEEDBACK--I'M NOT GETTING A HUNDREDTH OF WHAT YOU ARE----BUT IT'S GETTING BAD AHEAD OF SCHEDULE--WHAT DIDN'T HIT YOU--AND ME--FED THIS SUIT, CLARK----IT'S WAY PAST TIME YOU LEARNED--WHAT IT MEANS----TO BE A MAN--

Batman to Superman: ...I WANT YOU... TO REMEMBER, CLARK... ...IN ALL THE YEARS TO COME... IN YOUR MOST PRIVATE MOMENTS... I WANT YOU TO REMEMBER... MY HAND... AT YOUR THROAT... I WANT... YOU TO REMEMBER... ...THE ONE MAN WHO BEAT YOU...

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.