Hoot by Carl Hiaasan - 2002- A Newberry Honor Book

Website of The Newbery Award- included list of all honored books since 1922, lots of books for readers of all ages

Home Page of Carl Hiaasan

If you are looking for a great book for children and teens, you need look no further than the list of Newbery Award Winners.

The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

Here is the description on the Newbery Award Website of Hoot by Carl Hiaasan:

"Hoot by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)

"Hiaasen’s wildly funny satire features the new kid, Roy, joining forces with tough Beatrice and the elusive Mullet Fingers to defeat a bully, thwart an avaricious corporation and save a colony of burrowing owls."

Hoot is a very entertaining book, for young adult readers of all ages.  

The main characters are about 13, just getting interested in opposite sex, asserting their independent characters, and mixing in the drama of middle school.  The setting is South East Florida, an area the born in Florida Hiassan knows well.  Having a nodding acquaintance with the area, I put the location as in Collier County, South of Naples, not too far from the Everglades.  Only an author who really knows the area would include a reference to the invasive Brazilian Pepper Bush when depicting landscape.

The lead character, Ray, the  only child of a Department of Justice employee and a stay at home mother, recently moved from Montanna to Florida, when his father was transferred. He misses Montanna.  Being the new kid in school is never easy.  Early on we meet the school bully who has it in for Ray, Beatrice, a very athletic girl, a mysterious boy.  In the end it ends badly for the bully.

A new pancake restaurant, 469 in the chain, is under construction.  We meet the construction forum, a decent cop who wants to move up to detective (he gets in trouble when he falls asleep in his patrol car and walked to find the windows all painted black, a nasty corporate type, teachers, more kids and the guidance counselor.

Hiaasan does a great job showing the development of a teenage relationship between Ray and Brenda. Brenda is a very strong person, a star soccer player, nobody messes with Brenda.

We also get to know a policeman, the construction foreman, a few other adults. The poor policeman fell asleep in his patrol car.  When he awoke the windows were painted black and his captain was very mad.  Figuring out who did this helps drive the action.

It turns out an endangered species of Florida birds, the burrowing owl has nests on the site of the future pancake place.  It is a violation of Federal  law to disturb their nests without a special permit.  The restaurant chain tries lots of tricks to get around the rules.

There are several sets of parents, ranging from very good to models of parental dysfunction. 

I laughed out loud several times while reading Hoot.  There are very well done Everglades scenes, anyone who has ever done an Air Boat Everglades Ride will love  going along with Ray and Brenda.  Brenda's kind of mysterious step brother plays a big part in the plot.  At first he seemed just crazy but then Ray and I bonded with him.

I loved the ending.

I enjoyed Hoot a lot, so many exciting developments, great characters and strong values.

I think this would make a good Christmas gift for young readers

Mel u

"Prophecy of the Sisters" by Michelle Zink

Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink (2009, 343 pages-Young Adult)

The Three Stories I have posted on so far from Crazy Iris and other Stories of  Atomic Aftermath, edited and introduced by Kenzaburo Oe are all world class treasures but they are very far from light reading.    I do find myself needing a change of pace after reading these stories.    I recently read Lois Lowry's The Giver with  this objective of a change of pace in mind.    

A month ago I saw Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink in a bookstore.   I really liked the cover.   As I normally do with an unknown to me author I check the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads before I consider buying a book I know little about.    Most people seemed to like the book a lot.   There were a number of five star reviews on Amazon.   I also do like fantasy novels.   I have a proclivity for retreating into fantasy worlds at times and really enjoy a novel that constructs a well done alternate reality.   I also like to read first novels and this is Zink's first novel.    Given all this I decided  Prophecy of the Sisters might be a good escape book.

It is fully centered in the sensitive bookish young person battles the forces of darkness category.   The central characters are 16 year old twin sisters, Liu our narrator and her evil twin, Alice.   (The plot is a bit cliched as you can see but that is ok sometimes you like a cliched plot)    Both of the parents of the girls have recently died, the father under mysterious circumstances.   It is not made clear exactly when the book is meant to take place but it is in a time prior to automobiles.   The setting is England.   The family is quite wealthy.   The father of the girls was happiest when he was among his books in his private library.   He was very into all sorts of mythology and ancient occult lore.    Liu shares his interest and is also quite bookish.


One day the girls discover a mysterious tattoo like mark on their person.   A soothsayer is consulted who after some hesitation and plot maneuvering ends up telling the girls that they are the subjects of an ancient prophecy.   They discover their father had imported other girls to England.   Why he did this is part of the plot.   We wonder what the father knew.   Was he trying to protect his girls?   It turns out the girls may be key figures in a long running battle with dark forces.   They also go to a seance to visit with their late father.  (Ok maybe the novel is a bit cliched!)   There is some mild romantic action.

I was kept interested in seeing what would happen next.   Both of the sisters were brought to life by the  narrative.    This is part one of a three part trilogy.   There is no closure in this book and we will have to wait until at least 2011 for the last book.  

To me Prophecy of the Sisters was an ok escapist read.   The world it depicts has nowhere near the depth of the Harry Potter series or even that of  The Giver.  Both of these are very well done works so this is not meant as a criticism just as a notice to potential readers to not expect too much.     Some of the language of the book is overwritten and sometimes the thoughts expressed by the narrator border on silly.    This is a first novel and I will read the next two works in the trilogy with interest.   Some reviewers on Amazon were crazy for the book.   If I were going to rate it in the Amazon or Goodreads system I would give it 3 stars.   I would say it is an ok read if you can accept the cliched plot and overwritten quality some of the work.  

Mel u

"Barefoot in Fire: A WW II Childhood"-by Barbara-Ann Gamboa- Lewis Manila during WWII

Barefoot in Fire: A WW II Childhood-by Barbara-Ann Gamboa Lewis is a story  of the World War II
years in Manila.    It tells of the life of the author and her family in the Manila area during the period of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and the period when the Americans come back and drive the Japanese out.     As the narrative begins, Barbara Ann is about eight.

It is not a story of war atrocities or family tragedy so much as a tale of hope and the strength of the human .
spirit.  The family is an unusual one for the times.   Barbara-Ann's parents met in the 1930 when the father was attending the University of California.    When he and her American mother fell in love,  married and then moved to the Philippines her family broke all ties with her.   Both of her parents are atheists, something very rare in the Philippines then and now for that matter.    Her father had a bit of a temper, spent most of his free time reading.    He had an office job of some kind but like a lot of kids Barbara Ann does not know what he
did.  Her mother was a teacher.   She had a  younger brother and  younger sister.

As the bombs begin to fall, Barbara Ann's father digs a long trench and covers it with tin.   The family retreats to it when ever the bombs fall.  Soon Japanese soldiers are marching through the streets.   They hear that
General MacArthur has left the Philippines and the Americans have surrendered.   They begin to see Japanese everywhere and they fear them.   Barbara Ann reminds us that the Japanese also brought with them a lot of Korean soldiers (Korea became a Japanese Colony in 1910 with western agreement).    The Korean troops were given the worse assignments by the Japanese and were considered  even crueler than the Japanese.

The times comes when conditions are so bad for the family that the parents decide they will move out of their house in Manila to a house in the countryside where they can stay for free (it is owned by a friend out of the country and he wants somebody to stay in it).     It is too far for Barbara Ann and her siblings to go to a school so the parents begin to home school them.    The father seems almost like an old school Marxist and her parents love to endlessly debate ideas with each other.    Great efforts are made to protect the father's book collection.

One day a Japanese officer enters their house.     Barbara Ann and her siblings were home alone.    She acts like it is just a routine social call from a neighbor even though she is petrified.   The Japanese officer had been drawn to come inside by the sound of Barbara Ann practicing the violin.    The Japanese soldiers almost begins to cry as he pulls from his rucksack a photograph of a young boy playing the violin.   The boy is his son.   He tells Barbara Ann to keep practicing and that he will be back to see her.   He never returns.

Things begin to get worse.   The Japanese and Korean troops have taken nearly all the life stock and are using most of the good farmland to grow food for them.   The family gets by on some near rotten rice and found vegetables (weeds) and some eggs from two ducks they are able to keep.    One day far in  the distance they see a huge fire and great clouds of black smoke.     When the USA surrendered they declared Manila an open city so the Japanese would not burn it down.    The Japanese Navy decided they would burn it and kill as many people as they could before they lose Manila.    The book does not talk directly about this but it happens and we know it.

One wonderful day they see American troops in front of their house and find out the Japanese are gone.
Of course Barbara Ann and all the other kids are in awe of the Americans (they all seem huge to them).   Americans begin to stop by the house.    The father has gone back to work and the mother teaches kids at home.    Barbara Ann is tested by the school authorities  as she has not been in school for a while and placed as a second year HS student (right where she would have been had she never left school).     American soldiers begin to drop by the homes of locals to say hello.   They are welcomed freely by all.   Barbara Ann's parents invite a lot of them to dinner.   She fixes fried chicken and they bring canned goods.   The soldiers have not had a home cooked meal in years.   We can feel the happiness of everyone now that this terrible chapter has closed.     Remember Barbara Ann's Mother and her parents stopped speaking when she moved to the Philippines.   By the luckiest of coincidences one of the soldiers is the step grandchild of  Barbara Ann's Mother.   The mother learns this as it was common for soldiers to show off pictures of their families and the mother is amazed to see her own mother's picture.   The soldier takes a picture of everyone and mails it back to Barbara Ann's grandmother who had not heard any news on the family in about ten years.    The grandmother starts a correspondence.    The two younger siblings were very sick.   The mother was very weak also.   I will compress events a bit.    The grandmother brings the entire family to the USA.   Barbara Ann, following her father, becomes a great reader.   Her favorites are William Faulkner and the Russians.   In 1971 she got a PhD in soil science at the University of California at Berkeley and as of the writing of this book was a professor at Northwestern University.    Her younger sister joined the Philippine Repertory Theater and began a life on the stage.   She still organizes childran's musicals and shows in Manila.   (As a personal note, my two youngest daughters have attended classes at the same theater for two summers programs and loved it.)   She graduated from the University of the Philippines and married one of her professors.    Her brother had some rough times as a rebellious teenager but now has a good job as an area manager for a building supply company.

Bare Foot in Fire: A WWII Childhood reads just like a young adult novel.   It is beautifully illustrated by Barbara Pollak.    The production values of  the book are very high.   It was published by Tahanan Books for Young Readers, in Manila.    Here is the publisher's description of the book:

"Read the Powerful True Story of a Young Girl Growing Up In Manila in the early 1940's Pooh hunched over the dictionary looking for the perfect name to call herself. She founded it under -Barbara, meaning foreign, strange. It was the right name for a feisty, smart, fiercely independent girl growing up bi-racial and poor in war torn Manila. Join Pooh in her adventures, whether it's chasing after wild ducks, foiling a chicken thief, playing withher own makeshift airplane, or having the pluck to play violin for a very sad Japanese officer. Barbara Ann Gamboa-Lewis gives an unflinching, candid portrayal of her pre-teen years set against the backdrop of a war that tested to the edge the wills of men, women and children alike. Barbara Pollacks charming drawings perfectly capture the highs and lows of Lewis's unforgettable childhood. Although World War II happened a long time ago, today's readers will identify with Pooh as she struggles between right and wrong, joy and sadness, obedience and rebellion."

 I doubt if you will have much luck finding this book outside of the Philippines.    I just checked Amazon.com and their is one copy there for $15.95.    (I paid 295 pesos for it-about $6.00      It is a very good read and it was fun to find out what happened to everybody.    It for sure is worth reading if  you can get a library copy or can buy it in Manila.

This is the third book I have posted on concerning WWII in Manila.    All of the books are for sale at National Book Store Branches in the Manila area for under 250 pesos.   Every day there are fewer people among us with living memories of this period.   There will soon be almost no one left to pass this history along to young people in the Philippines.    This history is little taught in schools.    I hope people who can buy these books will do so and then pass them along  to others to read.  

Mel u

"Adventures of a Child of War" by Lin Acacio-Flores 2002

Adventures of a Child of War by Lin Acacio-Flores (2002-144 pages)  is a very well written, simply and straightforwardly told story of the  experiences of a young middle class boy growing up in Manila during the period of the Japanese occupation.   (The years covered are 1940 up to 1947.)

Eduardo has a very good comfortable life.   He is the only child of a teacher and an Engineer living in a nice part of Manila.   His family has a full time cook and gardener, as all middle class people did.   He has some German playmates on his block.   Slowly Eduardo begins to see his normally relaxed father becoming tense and nervous all the time.   He observes his parents constantly talking over  "the news".    They have never done that before.

One day he sees his father, who probably has never done a days manual labor in his life, begin with the help of the gardener to dig a big hole in the ground.   He hears his parents fighting over  the hole.   They do not fight very often.   His mother says that she will not hide in a hole in the ground no matter what happens.    His father then says "Ok we can stay in the kitchen as the walls are thickest there".   Eduardo knows soon enough that they are talking about a bomb shelter.  His father tries to make the family feel safe.


"No one will attack us.   Who wants to fight the Americans anyway?   Not the Japanese.   It would be like
cockroaches wanting to fight tigers!"    Eduardo knows his father does not quite believe this.    One day Eduardo's German playmates tell him that they are moving back to Germany as their father says war is coming.

The radio begins to advise people about practice bomb attack drills.   The young men of the neighborhood
treat it as a game.    Then one day "Japanese planes came.  Fast, Diving...like thousands of saws on steel.   The planes dropped their bombs on Manila...The air-raid siren would scream any moment of the night or
day...I felt tired all the time like I hadn't slept for a hundred years."    The family hides in the kitchen.   The raids seem to go on forever.   They are lucky, no bomb falls on their house.   Eduardo's father goes out to check on family members.   He comes back to report the many deaths and  the destruction of a beautiful city.  "I saw a dead child your age on one of the streets of Santa Cruz...what if it had been you?".   One day the family look out the window and see a terrible sight, Japanese soldiers marching down their street.   They are horrified as the Japanese bang on their door.   The father goes  to the door trying his best to be calm.   The family is lucky.   They have a small house so they Japanese do not want it.   Their neighbors with bigger houses are being put out of their homes with nothing.   Soon Eduardo's mother Lourdes is afraid to go out of the house for fear of being molested by the Japanese.   The Japanese soldiers begin to take all the pigs, chickens and most of the rice.   Lourdes uses her ingenuity to feed the family as best as she can.   "Mama said we are running out of rice and we had to make what we have last longer.   She had camote leaves and katuray flowers floating in the lugaw as well as bits of tuyo which made the soupy rice quite tasty."

Eduardo begins to see his father and other men in the neighborhood talking when there are no Japanese around.   Eduardo asks his father what they are talking about.   For the first time in his life Eduardo's father raises his hand as if he will strike him and tells him to go away.   It turns out the men are working on a plot to steal back the rice from the Japanese.   If Eduardo had heard about this and repeated it anywhere everybody
involved would be killed.   The plan works and they get more rice.   One day shortly after this the Japanese walk into the family house at dinner time.   They look in the pots and all over but they do not find any stolen rice as Lourdes had hid it well.   When the soldiers find a full pot of quality rice in a neighbors kitchen the father is taken away.

Life goes on and people begin to adjust and cope.   People have to feed and protect their families.   A lot of people have to compromise their integrity to do this.   It might be easy to say you would give up  your life rather than do that but if you had a wife and three children who would die also the decision is not so clear.
On the other hand, if you are seen  by other residents as helping the Japanese you could be killed as a collaborator.   Likewise spiteful neighbors or business associates could  report you  to the authorities as anti-Japanese, in exchange for a few kilos of rice for their families.

One day Eduardo hears a horse coming down the street.   It is being ridden by a Japanese captain.   This is an amazing sight to Eduardo.   The captain eventually become friends with the boy.   One day the captain shows him his pictures of his beloved wife and his father and  the Japanese begin to seem a bit more human.

Well known historical events are brought into the story.   The much revered General MacArthur keeps his promise to return.   We see the Japanese digging a huge hole in the ground and carrying all sorts of  big boxes into the ground.   In due time the Japanese are beaten and surrender.   We find out that the Japanese captain had left a mysterious map where Eduardo could find it once the captain died.   We do not see him die but we know he did.   Eduardo and his father spend two days studying the map until they see it as the clue to buried treasure.

I have told more of the plot of this story than I normally would in a review as this wonderful book will be hard to obtain outside of the Philippines.   It is not on Amazon.com.   This is a shame as this well told story deserves a place among young adult literature on WWII.   It is the only book of  its kind that I have seen on this topic.   I learned a lot from this well written book.  It kept my interest through out and I cared about Eduardo and his family.   There are no great horrors shown in the book.  It is a good look at Manila in WWII.   It demonstrates how values can be eroded by the compromises made to survive.  It spotlights well the suffering and heroism of the ordinary people of the Philippines.    I fear this book will never reach the wider audience it deserves.    People familiar with Manila will appreciate the local references. 

Mel U-Quezon City

The Reading Life 

"Getting the Girl" by Markus Zusak- A start of a reading life?

Getting the Girl is the second of Markus Zusak's four books. The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger deal directly with reading life issues. I love both of these books. Getting the Girl is more a young adult book than his subsequent works. It is very worth reading to see how rapidly Zusak is developing as a writer and it is a good tale of teen age angst and sibling issues between brothers.

There is no mention of reading and books directly in Getting the Girl. To me it is clear that the lead character
Cameron has the potential to develop into a serious reader. Throughout the book at the end of every chapter are notes in a hand written style font that show the thoughts of Cameron.

But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.

That's when the stories show up for me.

They find me all the time.

They're made of footsteps not only to the girl, but to me. They are made of hunger and desire and trying to live decent. They only trouble is, I don't know which of those stories come first.

Maybe they all just merge into one.

We'll see, I guess.

I'll let you know when I decide.

To me Cameron will grow into Ed in I am the Messenger and  Ed's reading life forefather, Ishmael. He will use his books to rise above the world and to   sink below ordinary life.



I will read Markus's Zusak's first book Fighting Ruben Wolfe before the year is over. It is sometimes interesting to read an author's work in reverse order as it makes you very conscious of his or her development


Mel u

"Number the Stars" by Lois Lowry-Fairy Tales and the Reading Life

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry is a beautiful book written in a simple elegant style. It was the Newberry Award winner in 1990 and is a young adult book that all ages will love. The plot centers on one families efforts to save a Jewish family from the nazis during their Occupation of Denmark in WWII. I do not like to say a huge amount about the plots of the books I write about as I hate spoilers in reviews. Amazon has a plot summery: "The evacuation of Jews from Nazi-held Denmark is one of the great untold stories of World War II. On September 29, 1943, word got out in Denmark that Jews were to be detained and then sent to the death camps. Within hours the Danish resistance, population and police arranged a small flotilla to take 7,000 Jews to Sweden. Lois Lowry fictionalizes a true-story account to bring this courageous tale to life. She brings the experience to life through the eyes of 10-year-old Annemarie Johannesen, whose family harbors her best friend, Ellen Rosen, on the eve of the round-up and helps smuggles Ellen's family out of the country."

I just want to talk about two things about the book that are related to The Reading Life. The ten year old lead character is not portrayed as a super reader or brilliant. She is just a regular kid living in some very tough times.

Here is a quote that to me tells us a lot about The Reading Life:
"The whole world changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same."

The stability in AnnaMarie's life comes from internalizing fairy tales. There is very much a very tale like quality in the book's treatment of King Christian X, The Danish king during WWII. This fairy tale like belief in the King gives the whole country strength to endure the horrors of the Nazi regime. We should not forget that Hans Christian Anderson came from Denmark.

The only book mentioned in "Number the Stars" is " Gone with the Wind" published in 1936, the movie came out in 1939 (a great year for movies). The book and movie are mythic accounts of a world of glory lost and regained in a period of great distress. It is a fairy tale like historical treatment of the the Civil War and the Antebellum period which shows a culture rising from the ashes. Not a real depiction of the Antebellum American south but a fairy tale version of it. This seems to reverberate in the minds of the books Danish Characters as reflecting their own hopes of a post war Denmark. Fairy tales can give us power. You only have to believe in a few.

I invite people to Google Einstein and fairy tales before they dismiss the internalization of fairy tale like stories as central to the Reading Life.
Number the Stars is tale of courage and a depiction of human kindness in the face of evil. I learned some very interesting things about the Danish's people efforts to help their Jewish citizens in WWII. This is very uplifting book.
I think this book might make a good family read along . It is exciting and kept my attention throughout.

I am looking forward to reading "The Giver" also by Lois Lowry. Both books are out in very well produced paperbacks. I have no reservations about endorsing this book to anyone who loves a good story.

Mel u

I AmThe Messenger by Marcus Zusak-a warning tale about the reading life

Cover of I Am the Messenger

I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak


After loving "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak I was very happy to find another of his books, I Am The Messenger, in a local book store. The books central character and narrator is a nineteen year old cab driver named Ed who lives in a shack with an old dog named Doorman.

"no real career.
No respect in the community.
Nothing"
Like The Book Thief there is a lot in I AmThe Messenger". The book shows us, among other things, how a reading centered life can lead us away from the world. We can decide for ourselves if this is a rationale for lack of worldly success or a rising above it. This may well seem strange to most readers but Ed kind of brought to my mind Ishmael of Moby Dick. In the opening pages of Moby Dick Ishmael talks about why his lack of worldly success means nothing in the grander scheme of things. He speaks like a man who has read deeply into lots of deep books. Way more than a whaler should have. His reading has left him fixed on a deeper reality and he can retreat at any time into his books. He is also a man who has no possessions, no family, no life on shore. Did the reading life protect Ishmael or elevate him or did it in part lead him to have nothing? In "I Am The Messenger" we can see the same thing starting to happen to Ed.

"I was reading when I should have been doing math and the rest of it"
"Have you ever noticed that idiots have a lot of friends"
"I have read Ulysses and half of Shakespeare. But I am still hopeless, useless and practically pointless"
"A man like me thinks too much"
"I think his real name is Henry Dickens. No relation to Charles"
"I have read Joyce and Dickens and Conrad"
"Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books"
"I didn't know words could be so heavy".

As the book progresses we see Ed Receiving a series of message in the form of playing cards. These cards give him instructions to intervene in the lives of those around him. Some he knows some he does not. The story develops as Ed tries to carry out these mysterious instructions. I do not want to give away to much of the plot as it is very inventive and a fun read. As the book ends we begin to wonder if Ed will one day be an old man in a shack surrounded by his books, maybe the only real constant in his life. We wonder if the books will keep him in the shack
or will they show him a shack is as good as a palace in the end. Like Ishmael floating on a coffin will Ed float through life in his cab? The reading life helps Ed see through the vanity of life (just like my own brings up to me the echo of Samuel Johnson) and at the same time gives him his excuse to live out his life in a shack.

I Am The Messenger is also a neat love story and a buddy book and has a lot of action scenes. I learned some Aussie slang from it. The book can tell us a lot about the reading life and it is also a bit of a warning.

I totally liked "I Am The Messenger" (2002-357 pages). It is a lot of fun and makes me hope Markus Zusak will write a lot more books. I have his first two books on my Amazon wish list.

"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak-a wonderful account of a reading life

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This is a wonderful book. It has won a host of prizes and been praised in the print media and in numerous book blogs. It is classified as a young adult book but please do not be put off by this. It is written in a way that will for sure appeal to age 10 or so up readers. Over all the vocabulary and sentence structure are not difficult. You will learn a few new German words along the way but that is ok. The production quality of the book is great, easy to read with at times changing type face. There is even a book within a book.

"The Book Thief" shows us a lot about the reading life, how a love and obsession with reading effects the main Character Leisel and those around her. There is an old saying about deep books-"The book reads you at the same time you read it". The narrator of the book is Death. This is a daring conceit pulled off perfectly. I even came to Like Death and felt in sympathy with him at times. The book is told in a time and place of great evil. You know it is there, you cant forget it but it does not get in the way. Leisel gets her first book, "The Grave Digger's Handbook" by stealing it, hence the book title. Leisel and her step father bond from reading the books she steals. One of the seemingly very unsympathetic characters in the book is the Mayor's wife. Not wanting to add any spoilers, Leisel and the Mayor's wife end up bonding over books in a very unexpected way. We see Leisel begin to see the humanity in other people through her reading of the books she steals. As you would guess, some very sad things occur in this book but some wonderful things also.

Least we think the effects of the reading life are all wonderful we can see in "The Book Thief" that it is not. One can be into the reading life-seeing life via the prism of the effect of the books we read on us by reading 1000s of books or by reading one book as the supreme clue to all things. In the world of "The Book Thief" for far too many people that meant "Mein Kampf", not flat out evil people but people who might have read only one book in their life are guided by it. Even if they cant read it, they carry it around and pretend to read it. So there maybe another idea at work here, maybe the book thief is really Mein Kampf and the millions of lives stolen by the ideas in it, lives of those loved the book as much or more than anyone else. Maybe reading 100s of books stops the power of one book.


Mel u