When we all slept in one room, I used to ask my siblings, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” One of my siblings wanted to live in Laos, in a house with screens instead of doors. I said I wanted to write in a great big lonely mansion in the…
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I stared at the words. My face crinkled, my eyes squinted—I started to cry. My whole soul seemed to cry out: “It’s not your fault! I’m so sorry!” I recovered soon enough, but I fixed the page number in my mind: 216. When I have gone back to that page and read the excerpt, the…
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Countless times I have paced in front of my bookshelf looking for a new book to read. Often I grab a book and run away with it. Sometimes, however, I search fruitlessly for what seems like hours. On one of those miserable days, a certain name caught my eye: Orson Scott Card. Although I was…
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Many people, if not all, know the saying “Never judge a book by its cover.” A couple years ago, I had resolved never to judge a book by its cover. I was pretty sure that I had followed that rule—until now. You see, a few years ago a friend gave us a book. Unfortunately, the…
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Is it possible to have paradise on Earth, a place where there is no anger, war, or pain? Your immediate reply will probably be “no,” and I’m pretty sure you’re right. However, if you were a citizen of Shalev, you might think otherwise. What is Shalev? Only a fictional city, built after a world that…
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