After four novels, four poetry collections, editing an anthology (and multiple awards), Eric Gansworth – who is also a playwright and visual artist – takes on young adult fiction for his 10th title. His 7th-grade hero, Lewis Blake, calls the Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New...
Here's a narrative I haven't seen often: a not-yet-an-immigration story. Young Aref has one more week left to spend in his idyllic home in Muscat, the capital city of his native Oman. In too-few days, he and his mother will fly to the other side of the...
Some of us should probably stay out of the kitchen – "cooking is not one of your strong points," Eldest remarked gravely the other day after the rice fell and the chicken was way too dry (and we had guests, egads!). To avoid such culinary disappointments,...
'The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot' presents a riveting slice of North Korean history Writing one of the most difficult-to-read books ever – Escape from Camp 14 (2012), about a young man’s harrowing odyssey from North Korea where he was bred as a labor camp slave...
Headlines in 2009 put Laura Ling and Euna Lee on screens and print around the world. 'American journalists held captive in North Korea' was certainly not a common occurrence. While filming footage for a documentary on North Korean defectors in March 2009, three colleagues from...
In 2009, journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling made headlines around the world, first for being kidnapped by North Korean border guards, then five months later being miraculously released. Such international reverberating news usually begets a book – in this case, two: both Lee and Ling released...
Over a decade has passed since a Suki Kim title landed on my shelves. That she's been repeatedly crossing the "immutable border" into North Korea since 2002 – just months after George W. Bush dubbed the closed country as one of the "axis of evil"...
Spring is coming! Start sharing the joy of rebirth – and all the small surprises that the new warmth brings – with this wordless, magical book from our northern neighbors. Here, even weeds can be the most thoughtful, transformative of gifts. Daddy and daughter – we'll call her Little Red...
Well, of course, the year I'm mostly out of DC, Brando Skyhorse is the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Residence at George Washington University. Not that I have any affiliation there now (only a leftover GWU ID from when I took a couple of classes 3.5 decades...
This thus-far six-parter has to be the most visually exquisite series in a long, long time. Every panel is an exercise in meticulously rendered details – whether fabric textures, the subtlest of facial expressions, fur moving in the wind, a hair out of place, a cloud...
While the majority of the nonfiction books about North Korea have focused on the extreme deprivation and unbearable suffering of the common citizen – for example, labor camps and slave children born to prisoners in Blaine Harden's Escape from Camp 14, numerous "ordinary lives" in Barbara Demick's...
The Buried Giant – the much anticipated seventh novel of Kazuo Ishiguro – does not disappoint The first question readers will most likely be asking about Kazuo Ishiguro’s seventh novel, The Buried Giant, will be, “Is it worth the decade-long wait?” The short answer is a...
Ah finally, I'm fully caught up with the good doc, having read each of Atul Gawande’s four bestsellers in published order. And how grateful am I to have followed through so methodically, because all that 'homework' certainly made this, his latest, an even fuller read. Here's...
These days, too many young folks know little of life before smart phones enabled virtual instant access. Last century – in the 1990s, that is – something called 'zines' gave voice to angry young voices ...
On the morning of her 12th birthday, Dawnie Rae Johnson – named for the new day rising when she was born – wakes to find a surprise under her pillow: a diary made by her 8-year-old brother Goober. The year will turn out to be crucial, not...
'Civilization and its Discontents' highlights the intertwined Pakistani, British, and American roots of Mohsin Hamid Thanks to Haruki Murakami, we won't have to wait as long for Mohsin Hamid’s future novels. Hamid's acclaimed first two, Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, took seven years each. His...
How surprised was I to hear earlier this month that Oprah's latest Book Club 2.0 pick just happened to be on my iPod! I suppose the fact that I always have no fewer than a couple dozen books on my phone at all times makes...
For Patsy, literacy began "as a joke." On the Davis Plantation in South Carolina in the 1860s, Mistress Davis’ niece Annie told her aunt, "'We are only playing at school ...
It's on top of all the bestseller lists on both sides of the Pond and far beyond, as well. You've seen it in every bookshop window. It's incessantly compared to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. Dreamworks already claimed it for the big screen last year even before it hit...
If you're already a manga/anime aficionado, feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph. If this is the first time you're hearing the titular word, henshin, then stay with me for a few lines. In Japanese – 変身 – the characters literally mean "change" and "body," respectively, and...
