“Not only will the time period of Suka’s Farm connect children to their elders, but its setting provides a meaningful platform for conversations about empathy, her
Terrified horses frozen in Lake Ladoga all winter, until the thaw begins . . . Starved Russian dogs strapped with explosives that detonate when the animals run under German tanks . . .
“Audition raises profound questions about human relationships. . . . examines how we perform for, communicate with, and read and misread one another. . . .
"The princess's delight quickly turned to sadness. She missed her family and did not want to get married without them. Arsalan told Amal she was the cleverest person he knew. . . .”
At the end of Herman Melville’s novella, “Bartleby the Scrivener” we learn that Bartleby’s “pallid hopelessness” may have been caused by his stint in the Washington, D.C., Dead Letter Office where
“Each man had seen plenty of death in his lifetime. Tuberculosis, smallpox, and scarlet fever had done their duty as colors of the herd. Childbirth and cancer had taken plenty too.
“The characters in A Forty Year Kiss are realistic, and many of the scenes are quite well-written, but the story itself falls short of feeling true to life.”