I’ve spent a good amount of time with Todd, Viola and the people of New World over the last month or so. I’m sad to see the end of the series (presumably…is Ness writing a fourth?), but I’m even sadder that I didn’t particularly enjoy this third installment — certainly not as much as the first two. “A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes Monsters of Men.” In the third novel, the book focuses mostly on war: the Spackle vs. the […]

My senior year in college, I took a Fantasty Lit class, in which we studied classic children’s fantasy novels from a smarty-pants lit perspective. We read 3 or 4 Harry Potters, 3 Narnia books and a couple from the Wizard of Oz series. I loved that class — I loved diving into these books that I’d read so many times before, and discovering how much they taught children about the world, and all the meaning hidden within them. I really hope that professor still teaches that class, […]