GUEST POST: "7 More Questions For Author Anna Olswanger About The Greenhorn Movie"

Anna Olswanger is a literary agent with Liza Dawson Associates in New York where she represents fiction and nonfiction, for young readers and adults.

She is the author of Shlemiel Crooks, a Sydney Taylor Honor Book, Koret International Jewish Book Award Finalist, and PJ Library Book, and  Greenhorn. 

Click here to read my review of Greenhorn.

Anna is the rights holder and licenser for the music of Berl Olswanger, a Memphis composer of the 1940's-1960s.

And, finally, through her work as a literary agent of children's books, Anna has developed a special interest in animal advocacy. Koko's Kitten and Looking for Miza are two of her favorite children's books—she recommends them to anyone who doubts the intelligence and emotional depth of animals. As a vegan and advocate of kindness to animals, she has compiled a list of links to organizations she is committed to and tweets about. She hopes visitors to this site will click on the links to the left and discover one or more organizations to support.

Click here to read Anna's original 7 Question interview.

Click here to read an interview with filmmaker Tom Whitus, director of Greenhorn

And now Anna Olswanger faces  7 MORE Questions:

Question Seven: What’s the biggest difference between the film version of Greenhorn and your novel?

Both the film and the book have a similar directness in the storytelling, but the characters differ, mainly in degree, because the actors brought their own bodies and voices to their roles. The rebbe, especially, is different from what I saw in my head during the writing. The rebbe in the film, because of his bearing, seems more vulnerable.

The soundtrack also makes a difference. The composer’s score carries the audience along emotionally without words, and the book, of course, conveys its emotion with words.

Question Six: Is there anything from a storytelling perspective that the medium of film has allowed you to do that you weren’t able to do in your book?

Because I was the co-producer, and closely involved with the script, I was able to rewrite some sections, such as the rebbe’s speech when Daniel first appears in the classroom. In the film, the rebbe talks about the prophet Ezekiel standing in a valley full of bones and prophesying to bring the bones back to life. This speech hints at what Daniel had been through as a Holocaust survivor, a moment I had left undeveloped in the book.

The medium of film forced me to deal with the particulars of the story that I didn’t concern myself with in the book. As the co-producer, I had to help find props, such as Talmuds for the classroom, a mezuzah cover for the dormitory room door, yarmulkes for the actors. Would boys in the 1940s have worn t-shits under their white shirts? What kind of shoes would they have worn? Did boys then wear watches? So, in a sense, the film forced me to deal with details and imagine the story even more realistically.

Question Five: What’s been your favorite thing about adapting your novel to a film?

The film opens the story to a new, and different audience. Six states have mandated Holocaust education: California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Ten other states have regulations encouraging or recommending the teaching of the Holocaust: Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Washington. Twelve states have also created Holocaust commissions or councils that support Holocaust education: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Teachers in those states have access to the film and its discussion guide, which means that students of all religions and ethnic groups can view Greenhorn and discuss the Holocaust, bullying, disabilities, and the importance of friendship.

Question Four: What’s been your least favorite?

Fundraising for the film was hard work. I didn’t like asking friends and family for money.

Question Three: What advice would you have for an author hoping to have their work adapted to film?

Be prepared to produce the film yourself. Find the director, and through the director, the actors and sets. Do a crowd fundraising campaign to finance the project. Accept that it won’t be a big budget film, but it will introduce your book to a wider audience.

Question Two: Now that you’ve had a movie made of your book, which is a dream for many authors, what’s the next milestone you’re looking forward to reaching?

My next milestone is somewhat unrelated. My father was a pianist and composer who died in 1981. I’d like to learn to play his compositions. One of his pieces, “Sutton’s Lick,” is part of the soundtrack of Greenhorn. I haven’t played the piano since I was a young child, and now I’d like to learn how to play the music he left behind.

Question One: If you could have lunch with any filmmaker, living or dead, who would it be and why?

I’d like to have lunch with Ron Howard. He started out as a child and teenage actor, and his career could have ended when the child parts dried up, but he went on to direct and produce. I think he’s a role model for any artist who wants to grow over time.

www.olswanger.com 

7 Questions For: Filmmaker Tom Whitus

Tom Whitus has been a film director since 1997, when he made the short film Parts in New York City. The film was picked up for worldwide distribution by NYC-based distributor The Cinema Guild. Since then, Tom has directed the feature films More Than Puppy Love (2000), Threat of Exposure (2002), The Only Witness (2003, showed on Lifetime Network in 2004),Matchmaker Mary (2008), Jr. Detective Agency (2010, showed on Showtime, 2011-12); Sam Steele and the Crystal Chalice(2012) and An Old Man’s Gold (2013). The last two features are in worldwide distribution this year. Also, in 2006, Tom directed Give & Take, an award winning short film.

Tom's next project is the film adaptation of former Book of the Week Greenhorn by Anna Olswanger, which is what most of our interview focused on. And now Tom Whitus faces the 7 Questions:




Question Seven: What are your three favorite movies and television programs?

My favorite movies are Sullivan’s Travels, The Best Years of Our Lives and – a guilty pleasure – Animal House. My favorite TV shows are Law & Order, Entourage and Seinfeld. 

Question Six: What’s your favorite thing about being a film director? What’s your least favorite thing?

What I love about directing is taking the written word and making it a visual experience. I love shot composition and working with the cast and crew to make little bits of magic at 24 frames per second. My least favorite thing is telling an actor they don’t have the part. I hate that.

Question Five: What attracted you to adapt Greenhorn to a film?

The screenwriter, Ree Howell, introduced me to Anna and asked if I would be interested in directing a short film based on the book. While I rarely direct films I did not write, and I’ve been mainly focused on feature films in the past five years – the concept intrigued me. When I read the book and knew Ree was writing the screenplay, I was sold.

Question Four: How does tackling a story about something as serious as the holocaust impact your approach?

You have to approach the subject matter with respect, but realize that these are kids. They want to laugh, they want to have fun – and they want to live their lives. Ultimately, the story is about remembering what happened and having the strength to live above it.

Question Three: When auditioning child actors, what qualities convince you in your casting decisions?

This is best answered with a story. I remember meeting a young woman named Katherine McNamara, a 12-year-old girl, when looking for the lead in a film I made about five years ago. She was an unknown in Kansas City, but I knew she was right for the role. I didn’t even audition her, I knew by the way she spoke to me and how she carried herself. She’s gone on to do a Broadway musical and star as Becky Thatcher in the latest Tom Sawyer film, so my instincts were right.

Question Two: How faithful will you be able to be to the book in your adaptation? As you’re translating the story to a different medium, what departures do you foresee being necessary?

Well, the first step is Ree doing her job in writing the screenplay, then it’s my job to make sure the visual impact matches the story that Anna has created and Ree has adapted. The drama is there, it will be my responsibility to make sure it gets on the screen. I’m quite sure you will see many story elements in the book translated to the film.

Question One: If you could have lunch with any filmmaker, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Preston Sturges. Like me, he was a writer as well as a director. Many of his films have a light-hearted sensibility and he was loyal to the actors he worked with.

Director Tom Whitus (right) on the set with actor William Devane

www.olswanger.com/greenhorn/filmproject.shtml

NINJA STUFF: Indie Confession

Guess what, Esteemed Reader! They're adapting Greenhorn by Anna Olswanger into a movie. Tomorrow we're going to feature our first ever interview with a filmmaker as Greenhorn's director, Tom Whitus, will be here to face 7 Questions. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie version of a Book of the Week and we're going to be following the production over the coming months.

Also, if you haven't read it yet, our old friend Susan Kaye Quinn writes an amazing blog I'd recommend checking out anytime. But right now she's live blogging a whole book called The Indie Survival Guide, and I am greatly enjoying her posts. We've been talking about all things indie this summer and if you've been thinking about going indie yourself, you owe it to your readers to invest some time with Susan's hard-learned advice.

It's going to be an interesting year, Esteemed Reader. If you read this blog regular (and you don't, because I'm very bad about regular posting) you know that Mrs. Ninja and I are expecting our first Little Ninja in December. I expect a baby will change my life in a million ways I can't begin to foresee now and already it's changing my life in small ways.

Adam Smith, my best friend since the third grade and one of the best men at my wedding, had a baby boy last week. I've been spending a great deal of time with him just recently working on a project I'll tell you more about soon--when it's ready to share, you won't be able to get me to shut up about it.

Adam's an artist. The drawing above is an illustration of his from a children's book we published in college. He'll kill me when he sees I'm sharing it as that's an old one, but his new work isn't ready to share yet. It amused me over the weekend to see him dividing his time between inking a horrific poster of zombie carnage and feeding his infant son. It was a preview of things to come in my own life as I'm sure I'll be dashing from the nursery to my writing office and back again.

As for the book, please don't bother looking for it. There's a reason I've been running this blog for years and this is the first time I'm ever mentioning I self-published a novel. If you never did anything stupid in college, I suppose you're right to judge me, but I'll wager most of your college shenanigans are far more interesting than indie publishing a below average book for children.

I loved the book and I still do. I'm not sorry I published it, but I'm not mentioning the title because I don't want you finding it and being disappointed when you discover it reads like a book written by a too-young writer uncertain of his voice and craft. But don't let me convince you not to read it. Let me share with you a one-star review it received titled "Not For My Kids:"

After reading favorable reviews comparing this book's interest level to Harry Potter, I purchased it, expecting a charming, exciting nighttime read with my three children, ages 11, 8, and 6. Within just the first few chapters, I could tell that I had made a mistake. First of all, I did not see the imaginative writing and illustrating I was promised. Instead I found amateur artwork, design, and story development. I abruptly read about a young boy left at home at night while his father worked because his mother had left them (unsettling for young listeners). And once Jim starts hearing and seeing "monsters," that was it. My youngest two children (who have listened to many pages of Harry Potter) were too scared to continue and didn't even want the book in their rooms. This was not what I expected from the reviews.

To be honest, I've always loved this review. For me, the worst possible reader reaction would be no reaction and a part of me is still thrilled to have so terrified an innocent woman and her children. The more rational, mature me, however, realizes publishing before I had enough experience to know what I was doing was a mistake.  I'm embarrassed that poor woman spent money and came away with an inferior product that did not accomplish it's intended purpose.

My indie publishing experience was an epic fail. The illustrations were a nice touch and I think the format holds up, but fortunately, this all happened many years ago before the advent of ereaders. Adam and I had to take our book door-to-door and found not one bookstore willing to support us, probably because we looked like punk college kids without any money. We did, however, convince a local chain of Papa John's to hand out coloring sheets for a time. We sold some pizza, but no books:(

It's easy to forget how fast the world changes and preferable to forget how rapidly I'm aging, but when I went indie more than a decade ago now (big sigh), the world was a different place. Paper books and big publishing reigned and indie authors lacking their own pre-existing distribution network were dead in the water, especially if their only means of promotion were delivering pizzas with coloring sheets attached:)

For my birthday I received a high definition Kindle Fire (it's so awesome) and if you don't own such a device, you need to get one. I used to stop by the bookstore at least twice a week to get a read on the market, but they closed all the bookstores near me and now I have to drive across town--and I live in Indianapolis. In the surrounding towns, readers have their libraries and online retailers, though there's still one or two used bookstores in operation.

Now, instead of driving across town and committing time I don't have to browsing, I can lay in bed at night and browse the Kindle store. I read samples of books and check out the reviews and if I'm convinced to take a chance, the author receives my money a click later, not if I remember next time I'm in the bookstore. I know indie booksellers are cursing me at this moment so I should add I do still drive across town and support Kids Inc as should you.

But thanks to ereaders, I can peruse the titles of indie books I never would've had access to otherwise. It's an exciting time to consider indie publishing as a distribution network at last exists so that you can write something in your pajamas and I can buy it in my pajamas. If you want your book to reach me, you don't have to drive across the state to a printer, get a big box of books, and then take them door to door with pizzas. You can put your book up online and anyone in the world could potentially read it.

But should you? For my part, I'm glad the online distribution network did not exist when I tried my experiment in self publishing. Lack of distribution saved me from myself. Think long and hard before you indie publish. I'm all in favor of writers doing it, but unless you want some reader of your blog more than a decade later discovering your book and then emailing you, necessitating your writing a confession post about it, make sure the book you're publishing is ready to be a part of your permanent record:)

7 Questions For: Author Anna Olswanger

Anna Olswanger is a literary agent with Liza Dawson Associates in New York where she represents fiction and nonfiction, for young readers and adults.

She is the author of Shlemiel Crooks, a Sydney Taylor Honor Book, Koret International Jewish Book Award Finalist, and PJ Library Book, and the just-published Greenhorn. Anna is the co-author of My Shoshana.

Click here to read my review of Greenhorn.

Because of her interest in Jewish-themed books, she has created a number of resources for Jewish book authors on her website, she has created a number of resources for Jewish book authors, including an interview with a psychiatrist about the meaning of Jewish narrative, and online discussion groups for authors and illustrators of Jewish children's books and marketing professionals in the Jewish book world.

She has published several Jewish-themed miniature books for Judaica collectors.

Anna is the rights holder and licenser for the music of Berl Olswanger, a Memphis composer of the 1940's-1960s.

And, finally, through her work as a literary agent of children's books, Anna has developed a special interest in animal advocacy. Koko's Kitten and Looking for Miza are two of her favorite children's books—she recommends them to anyone who doubts the intelligence and emotional depth of animals. As a vegan and advocate of kindness to animals, she has compiled a list of links to organizations she is committed to and tweets about. She hopes visitors to this site will click on the links to the left and discover one or more organizations to support.

And now Anna Olswanger faces the 7 Questions:

Question Seven: What are your top three favorite books?

My current favorite book is City Dog, Country Frog, which epitomizes what I've learned so far about life on this earth: that we love, that what we love can leave us, and that we can love again. The story could be a cliche, and yet, it moves me every time I read it—the innocence of the dog when he plays with the frog, the love of the frog in return, the frog who becomes tired and old, the sadness of the dog when he returns the next summer to find that the frog is gone, and the love that begins to grow between the dog and his new friend. The book is profound and beautiful. I could read it endlessly. And it reminds me why I love picture books, because they are little novels.

As for my other two favorite books, I'll mention my books here, or what's an author interview for?

So, my next favorite book is Shlemiel Crooks.

My father was a wonderful storyteller. When he died in 1981, I yearned to hear his stories again about growing up in the 1920’s in the Jewish neighborhood of Memphis. If I couldn’t hear his stories again, I could at least learn more about the background of the stories and who his parents and grandparents were (they died before I was born), so I began genealogical research.

I went to St. Louis, where my grandparents had lived before moving to Memphis. I discovered there a Yiddish newspaper article about the attempted robbery of my great-grandfather’s kosher liquor store. This is the English translation of the article:

Reb Eliyahu Olschwanger Almost Robbed

Shlimazel crooks, their work was unsuccessful. Last Thursday at 3:00 a.m. in the middle of the night, several men drove to the saloon of Reb Eliyahu Olschwanger at the corner of 14th and Carr Streets. They opened the saloon and removed several barrels of brandy and beer. Mr. Mankel who lives on the second floor, upon hearing what was going on in the saloon, opened the window and began shouting for help. Benjamin Resnik from 1329 Carr Street, hearing the shouting, shot his revolver from his window. The band of crooks got scared and left everything, including their own horse and wagon and ran away. Police immediately came and took everything to the police station.

What could be funnier than crooks who left with less than they came with! From that Yiddish article, I created Shlemiel Crooks (not Shlimazel Crooks like in the article, as I suspected that "shlemiel" was a more widely known word). After adding the ghost of Pharaoh, the prophet Elijah, and a talking horse to the story, I was in business. Shlemiel Crooks became a Sydney Taylor Honor Book and a PJ Library Book. And I discovered the added pleasure of being able to share my family's story with children, even though I had none of my own.

My next favorite book (what's an author interview for?) is Greenhorn. I heard the real story of Greenhorn thirty years ago in Israel. The rabbi of my synagogue stood in the front of our tour bus as we approached Jerusalem and told us about a little boy who had lost his parents in the Holocaust, who wouldn't speak when he came to live at the Brooklyn yeshiva where the rabbi was in the sixth grade, and who wouldn't let a tin box out of his sight.

The little boy made a friend in my rabbi. Later, the little boy agreed to live with his friend's family. And in the actual scene in the Afterword, the little boy, who had grown up to marry and have his own family, was finally able to bury the contents of the tin box in the backyard of his house in Jerusalem.

I discovered through all those successive drafts of Greenhorn that I was writing, not about loss and loneliness, but about family.

Through Shlemiel Crooks, I was able to share my family's story with children. Now, it was the same with Greenhorn, published just a few months ago. My grandparents' cousins, and their children who never left Eastern Europe, died in the Holocaust. I have no children to discuss my cousins with, or even the Holocaust that wiped out not just them, but two thirds of Europe's Jews. Through Greenhorn, I can take part in discussions between children, parents, and teachers about the Holocaust. The publisher has even made free guides available for parents and teachers to facilitate discussions. So, although I don't have my own children, I can share something I consider important with any child who reads Greenhorn.

Question Six: How much time do you spend each week writing? Reading?

I write in the mornings. Because of the demands of my job as literary agent, I can only write a few minutes each day, but those minutes add up, and I feel that I'm always working on a project. I read during meals because that's when I can take a break from being on the computer. I yearn for pre-email days when I would lie on the couch and read before going to bed, sometimes staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning to finish a novel, but now I answer email before going to bed.

Question Five: What was the path that led you to publication?

I majored in theater in college and wanted to be a playwright. I wasn't happy with the MFA program I was in, so I went to London to try to start a theater and write for a group of actors. Before starving to death, I discovered children’s picture books in a large bookstore. What I discovered was that those little books contained a script, costumes, lighting, and stage set between their covers. I didn't need a theater anymore. So, when I was thinking about writing Shlemiel Crooks, I decided it would be a picture book. In the course of its submission history, it received over 100 rejections. The story did get published in Young Judaean magazine (and won a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award), but I had no offers from book publishers. I then decided to self-publish Shlemiel Crooks as a miniature book for collectors. And as soon as I did that (the universe has a sense of humor), NewSouth Books, an independent publisher, decided it wanted to publish Shlemiel Crooks. This wasn't the big New York publisher I had been waiting for but I said yes, and it's been a good experience. I've learned that money is not the only consideration in being published (there's little of that), and best of all, it's allowed me to pay honor to my great-grandparents and to share their story with thousands of children.

Question Four: Do you believe writers are born, taught or both? Which was true for you?

I grew up in a household where my father, a professional pianist, practiced the piano an hour-and-a-half each day. I heard that rhythm every day of my life until he died, and I'm sure that it enabled me to hear the rhythm in language. So in that sense, I was born a writer.

Question Three: What is your favorite thing about writing? What is your least favorite thing?

My favorite thing is revising. I love going back over the text again and again and getting it right so that it reads well on the page. My least favorite thing is getting the first draft down. I struggle hard to find the words and even to find the story. I don't really know what the story is until I get the words down on paper.

Question Two: What one bit of wisdom would you impart to an aspiring writer? (feel free to include as many other bits of wisdom as you like)

I have two bits of wisdom:

If you accept that books can change the world, try to see the bigger picture: It's not just your book that can help change the world, but everybody's book. So, help someone else get published. That may feel a bit like sleeping with the enemy, but if you help bring one more book in the world, the practicality is that if the book sells, the publisher will want another book to sell, and that book could be yours. The market keeps wanting more.

           

You are here to contribute to the universe in the way that is particularly yours. Why even consider chasing the market? Write the story that only you can write, not the dystopian, vampire, zombie, ancient gods, angels, demons, teenage secret spies book that others are writing.

Question One: If you could have lunch with any writer, living or dead, who would it be? Why? 

Shakespeare, though I'm not overly curious about the private lives of writers. We live in an intrusive world where no one is allowed to have secrets. It's a world where the private is public (witness people talking on cellphones in public about the most intimate aspects of their lives). I am content to let writers be. I don't need to know why they wrote what they wrote or how their books reflect their personal lives. I am happy that Shakespeare left no tell-all autobiography, no memoir. I think the man should (always) have his privacy.

www.olswanger.com 

Book Review: GREENHORN by Anna Olswanger

First Paragraph: “I don’t know what’s so important the rebbe couldn't let us finish the inning,” Ruben whispered to his brother Bernie. “Now the fifth grade’s playing stickball in our part of the yard.”

Anna Olswanger will be here Thursday to face the 7 Questions.

This is going to be a difficult review, Esteemed Reader. I've been staring at the screen now for more than ten minutes, uncertain how to begin. I've just read Greenhorn for a second time and I'm devastated. I didn't cry, but I have no doubt many readers will. 

Originally, I wrote Anna Olswanger in hopes of having her be one of our weekly literary agents. Alas, she's taking on few new clients. But it turns out she doesn't just represent authors, she is one. I don't know what kind of agent she is, but Anna Olswanger is an incredibly gifted author. Agent authors have become authors to watch for me as I admired Mitchell's License by Holly McGhee and Girl Parts by John Cusick (review coming soon).

Greenhorn is a middle grade novel set in a Jewish school in Brooklyn, 1946. And this happens:

Rabbi Ehrlich cleared his throat. “We have twenty boys coming to us from Poland—” he began, then wiped his eyes again. “Their parents died in concentration camps.”
For a moment, everybody kept quiet. Then Irving, the guy in the back row, raised his hand. “My mama’s afraid our cousins back in Poland got sent to a concentration camp. So how come they’re called camps, Rebbe? Camp is where kids are supposed to spend the summer eating chocolate pudding dessert.”

The preceding paragraph is on page two so if you're a parent who somehow began reading this book aloud to your too-young child without investigating the book beforehand, you still have a chance to turn back. If a librarian or book store employee is reading this book to a group, you can quietly excuse your four-year-old. Olswanger is firing a warning shot across the nose and it's good that she does as there are some grizzly aspects to this story (by virtue of history):

“My p-p-papa told me about how the Nazis killed the Jews in concentration camps. He said the Nazis were evil p-p-people. He said they were so evil they experimented with cutting the ff-fat from dead people’s bodies to make soap.”

The Ninja is not a yet a parent, but I am a fun uncle, and I can't imagine telling my nieces and nephews about the holocaust. Let their parents do it!!! But someone needs to. Part of raising and educating a child is telling them how the world is and isn't. To not tell a child about slavery, the trail of tears, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and all the other terrible tales of our history is to not prepare them for the world they've been brought into. And if you're raising Americans, make sure they know the Nazis were not history's only society of racist, murderous fiends.

Greenhorn is the perfect tool for parents and educators to introduce younger children to the holocaust. Waiting for a child to reach adolescence and then giving them Eli Wiesel's Night is throwing them in the deep end of the pool. Giving children Greenhorn at an earlier age allows them to dip their feet and not get completely sucked under.

Greenhorn is set in Brooklyn at a yeshiva, after all, and removed from the worst events of the period.  Our narrator is Aaron, who has big dreams not involving the holocaust:


"See, I want to be a r-r-rabbi like my papa when I grow up. Ruben and Bernie and all the guys would laugh if they knew. How does a guy who s-s-stutters get to be a rabbi?”

Meet Daniel, Aaron's new friend and newly orphaned immigrant from Poland. He's got secrets, most prominently a small, tin mystery box:


Ruben said, “me and Bernie and the guys are starting to wonder if you got loose marbles or something. It’s okay for our little sister to go around holding a blanket because she’s only three years old, but what’s with you? How come you can’t let that box out of your sight?”

Greenhorn is a short book and you'll finish it in half an hour. I'm not going to tell you what's in Daniel's mystery box or whether or not Aaron learns to control his stutter. Olswanger's is a quick jab, designed to knock the wind out of you, and then to be read again for full understanding. 

This concludes my review: Greenhorn is a powerful book that should be in libraries everywhere. It's a great tool for teachers and parents.

I have two points I want to make for writers and then we'll call it a day. First, although Greenhorn is a short book, it's not a trite book. I'm not going to tell you the contents of Daniel's box, but knowing the subject of this story, you can likely infer whatever's inside is the result of awful. And it is. The contents of the box hit the reader between eyes (and I was already flinching), and are gruesome enough to be honest about the Holocaust. That's crucial.

Second, it is not enough for Olswanger to write "the holocaust was bad." Of course it was. This isn't a history, it's a story. As such, there are characters with goals and a mystery to draw the reader in, followed by a satisfying conclusion. The reason Greenhorn works is because it's a story first, Holocaust memorial second.  And because it's a story, Olswanger can end it on an upbeat note as not to leave younger readers totally depressed. 

I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Greenhorn:


"You think you’re going on the Quiz Kids Show for knowing all there is to know about synagogues? Talk about something else, Gravel Mouth.”


Ruben’s and Bernie’s eyes popped open like the tops of soda bottles.


First, Bernie and Ruben started to snore like trains pulling out from Marcy Avenue. Then Daniel made a rustling sound that meant he was sliding his tin box under his pillow.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.