Bookathon - N

 N is for Nobel Prize, Newberry Award, Notable Books

Surprisingly there are very few N authors I can name that stand out for me. So if you are thinking of a possible pseudonym, consider starting it with N. 

One book that the children love that even blind and low vision children will appreciate is The Book with no Pictures by B J Novak. 

Don't judge a book by it's cover, or it's pictures, judge this book by the silly monkey voice you have to put on when you read it out loud. As far as I know, he hasn't written a book called The Book with no Words, though there ARE wordless books around. For those ones you have to make up the story as you go (which I've heard some teachers actually do, because they can't read). 

My book with no Pictures is one that you write in yourself. I am all for writing your own books, if you can't get to a bookshop or library and you've run out of Reader's Digest condensed fiction. No, we never won any of the sweepstakes they used to send us either. 

Otherwise you mostly have a choice between Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov or the Borrowers by Mary Norton. I don't really recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran. You can if you want, but Tehran is a long way from New Zealand. Lolita is one of those books that have you squirming in horror that there are men out there who 'love' underage girls and underage girls that fall for them. Readers seem to love true crime and murder mysteries but when it comes to child abuse (Lolita is 12 in the novel) nobody seems to bat an eye. However there are worse books you could read that haven't been celebrated as literary masterpieces.

The Borrowers is about a family of tiny people who inhabit the houses of big people, like mice except they are people. They sleep in matchboxes and feed off crumbs the big people drop, and nobody really knows they are there, for if they are found out they may be banished and lose their squatter's rights. I've always liked books like these about Little People, Big Dreams, or Stuart Little, the Baby-sitter's Little Sister and even Little Women. I think little people are underestimated and often ignored by big people, but when the little people win out, everyone cheers. 

I am also a borrower, so if you are one too, I recommend borrowing these books. You might have to ask a Big person if the book is out of reach, though when I work in libraries I always make sure the little people can reach the little books on the bottom shelves, because little people have their lives to live too and shouldn't have to live at the mercy and whims of the Big People. 

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