by PBS
Distraught at the lack of relatable protagonists in literature, Reynolds sought to create his own. He has become a middle-grade and YA super-success, particularly with so-called reluctant readers. He spends a lot of time speaking to schoolchildren, having given hundreds of talks over the past few years, chatting about “Kool-Aid and ramen noodles, Jordans and basketball, because that’s what matters to them.” And he promises to never, ever write boring books. Both critics and readers respond to Reynolds’s approachable characters and real-world stories told in authentic voices. Ghost was a National Book Award finalist in 2016.
The protagonist of Ghost is Castle Cranshaw, an eighth grader who lives in a housing development with a single mom who’s always working. He prefers the nickname Ghost, a reference to the time he took off after his drunken father shot at his mother and him. Now his dad’s in jail. One day he outruns a cocky guy on his school’s track team, known as the Defenders, and gets recruited by the coach, whose drug addiction destroyed his chance to run on the US Olympic team. Ghost’s mom can’t afford fancy running shoes, so he shoplifts a pair; the overwhelming guilt slows him down, even as he works to become the Defenders’ fastest sprinter.
Running becomes the book’s central metaphor: at the start of the novel Ghost runs away from his problems. However, as his coach explains, “Trouble is, you can’t run away from yourself.… Ain’t nobody that fast.” Through the physical act of running, as well as the bonds he forms with other runners, Ghost gradually learns to speed up and even run toward his hopes and dreams. Ghost launched the Track series, which will continue to focus on different members of the Defenders. Patina (2017), the second book, tells the story of a black girl being raised by an adoptive white mother and is Reynolds’s first book written from a female point of view. The third book in the series is Sunny (2018), about a boy with a cheerful disposition and an awful past.
At 19, Reynolds lost a friend to an execution-style killing. He writes about the subsequent pain and anger in Long Way Down (2017), a novel in verse about a boy looking to avenge his brother’s murder: it was long-listed for the National Book Award. The Boy in the Black Suit (2015) tells the story of a teen who starts hanging around funeral homes after his mother dies from breast cancer and his father spins into alcoholism, and who finds solace in his grief by being around others who are grieving. When I Was the Greatest (2014) describes a 16-year-old with Tourette’s syndrome, as a way of talking about how mental illness is, and is not, dealt with in the black community. Reynolds was born in 1983 and came of age during the AIDS and drug epidemics of the 1980s and 1990s. He points to Queen Latifah as a role model who introduced him to poetry and helped him get through a difficult childhood. His career demonstrates a passionate commitment to going far beyond familiar narratives and to crafting a wide range of books for young people from all backgrounds.
The first edition dust jacket of Gilead, published in 2004.
Author Marilynne Robinson hails from Idaho. She taught for 25 years at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop before transitioning to professor emeritus in 2016.
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GILEAD
Marilynne Robinson · 2004
Some novels demand to be read in great gulps; the profound beauty and spirituality of Gilead (2004) ask to be slowly and carefully savored.
The book opens in 1956, as Reverend John Ames writes a letter to his seven-year-old son, with the knowledge that he, as a late-in-life father, likely won’t witness the boy’s entrance into adulthood. So he recounts his own childhood in Gilead, a small town in Iowa. He describes how his father, a Christian pacifist, would argue passionately with his grandfather, a radical abolitionist similar to John Brown, who wore his gun while preaching at the pulpit, and who would have given away everything his family possessed in service of his beliefs. Ames discusses his entrance into the Congregationalist clergy, as well as his ongoing struggles with belief and righteousness.
Ames’s first wife died giving birth to their daughter, who also died. He must cope with these losses even as the family of his best friend, Boughton, grows and grows. His envy transforms into an unyielding gratitude after the surprise arrival of Lila, an uneducated itinerant woman, into his life when he is already an old man. The passages that address his love for Lila and their son are some of the book’s most potent. Ames never expected to again be a husband or a father. But having been given the opportunity to fulfill these roles, he now sees them as paramount to his identity. He is a deeply moral, deeply worthy man.
But Gilead offers more than a catalogue of one man’s goodness and grace. Ames also writes about his feelings about the return of his namesake and godson, Boughton’s wayward son. Ames watches as this man develops a special bond with Lila and grows into a second father to Ames’s son. He bears witness to what his eventual absence might look like.
The novel captivated readers across the spectrum, from Barack Obama to the National Book Critics Circle, which awarded the novel its prize in 2004, to the feminist internet, which regularly posts articles about the effect of Robinson’s work on its readers, devout or otherwise. The novel was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Prior to Gilead, Robinson had published the well-regarded Housekeeping, a novel about two sisters, in 1980.
Robinson continues to revisit the world of Gilead. Home (2008) focuses on the Boughton family, taking place during much of the same time period as the earlier novel. Lila (2014) offers the perspective of Ames’s wife, detailing her life before she met Ames. Taken together the trio offers what one critic from BuzzFeed called “religion without evangelism.… [T]hey wrestle, without pomposity, with what can only be described as the most important questions of life. What does it mean to be good? To forgive? To die? And what might a life of striving toward those answers look like?”
Born in Idaho in 1943, Robinson graduated from Pembroke College, at the time the women’s college at Brown University, and earned a PhD from the University of Washington in 1977. After 25 years of teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she transitioned to professor emeritus in 2016, in part to focus more on writing. In addition to fiction, Robinson writes nonfiction on such subjects as Calvinism, education, American Puritanism, democracy, and environmentalism.
A recent essay for the New York Times offers Robinson’s ruminations on how much literature teaches us. Books expand our minds, she argues, giving us access to experiences, ideas, and people vastly different from our own. One way to strive toward a life worth living, then, might be to simply start reading.
The front cover of The Giver, first published in 1993.
Lois Lowry pictured in 2014 at her summer home, where she writes many of her manuscripts. She began writing YA when an editor who liked her journalism reached out to her.
The Giver was made into a movie starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, and Taylor Swift, released in 2014.
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THE GIVER
Lois Lowry · 1993
Memory matters. The idea is central to The Giver (1993), the young-adult novel that won the Newbery Medal in 1994. What and how we choose to remember, to memorialize, and to pass on not only shapes us as individuals but also shapes our collective consciousness. Creating and cementing connections between people may be thought of as the broader theme of Lois Lowry’s entire oeuvre, more than 40 books primarily for children and young adults.
When the novel begins, Jonas’s society, known as the Community, appears to be perfect. He and his friends do fun, pleasant things. Nobody has to do the dishes, nobody goes hungry, and nobody feels pain or sadness. But, on the day he turns 12, Jonas is apprenticed as the next Receiver of Memory, and he slowly discovers “Sameness,” the plan to eliminate all suffering and strife from everyone’s lives. What seemed a utopia is revealed as dystopia: no one can see color, or express creativity, or experience the emotions and variety that give richness and meaning to our days.
Jonas trains with the Giver, the current repository of memory and the only person allowed to read books other than those man
dated by the Community. As Jonas is introduced to new depths of knowledge and emotion, his eyes are opened to other uncomfortable truths. In his world, all infants are assigned to families rather than raised by biological parents. Jonas’s father brings home a troubled baby, Gabriel, to nurture—if the baby doesn’t thrive, he will be “released from the Community” and disappeared to Elsewhere. Despite warnings not to become attached, Jonas feels protective of the infant and struggles with how to reconcile his conflicting personal and societal responsibilities. Although The Giver ends ambiguously, the three books that follow, Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004), and Son (2012), help clarify the fate of Jonas and Gabriel.
In the 1990s, Jeff Bridges optioned The Giver for a movie, after looking for a project that fit two criteria: his dad, Lloyd Bridges, could star in it, and his kids would enjoy watching. By the time the movie got made in 2014, however, his father had passed away, so Jeff wound up taking the role of the Giver himself. Meryl Streep and Taylor Swift added more star power to the cast.
Lowry was born in Honolulu in 1937 and left college to get married at age 19. She and her first husband eventually raised four children. In time she began studying at University of Southern Maine, graduating with a degree in English. She developed an interest in photography and took photos to accompany articles she submitted to publications like Redbook magazine. Based on the strength of her journalism, an editor asked whether she’d ever consider writing a YA book. A Summer to Die, based in part on the death of Lowry’s older sister from cancer, was published in 1977. She also drew on her elderly father’s senility to consider what life might be like without the ability to remember.
Using her books to explore demanding subjects and ideas comes naturally to Lowry. The Giver touches on euthanasia and depicts a boy who openly defies the authorities in his life. As a result of their challenging topics, her novels have been banned almost as frequently as they have been extolled. In a world of encroaching Sameness, The Giver offers readers the sweetness of rebellion.
From Page to Stage and Screen
THE BEST ADAPTATIONS
WHEN AN ADAPTATION from a novel succeeds—as those listed below do—fans get double the pleasure: the joy of reading the book coupled with the thrill of seeing beloved characters and plots enacted on-screen or onstage
BEST MOVIES
GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)
The masterful 1939 movie Gone with the Wind, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, has become a cultural touchstone, outshining perhaps even the 1936 novel on which it was based. Indeed, the film’s most famous line—Rhett Butler’s “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”—is a deviation from Margaret Mitchell’s book. Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)
Harper Lee loved the 1962 movie based on her 1960 novel, exclaiming, “If the integrity of a film adaptation is measured by the degree to which the novelist’s intent is preserved, Mr. Foote’s screenplay should be studied as a classic.” Gregory Peck garnered tremendous critical praise for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, who was named the #1 movie hero of all time by the American Film Institute in 2003.
THE GODFATHER TRILOGY (1972–1990)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and featuring a slew of stars, The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II focus on the events described in Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel of the same name. The third movie came out in 1990, tracing the fate of Michael Corleone and his Italian American crime family into the 1970s and 1980s. Puzo’s death in 1999 put a fourth film on hold.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS (2001–2003)
Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) from 2001 to 2003 proved so popular that he went on to make another three movies based on The Hobbit (1937). Collectively the six movies won 17 Academy Awards and have earned close to $6 billion. Amazon recently announced that it would be developing the books for the small screen.
HARRY POTTER SERIES (2001–2011)
The seven novels (1997–2007) detailing Harry Potter’s coming-of-age were transformed into an incredibly successful eight movies, starring Daniel Radcliffe as the orphan boy who discovers his magical abilities and saves the world from the evil Lord Voldemort. With the involvement of J. K. Rowling, several more movies, including prequels, will be coming out over the next few years.
BEST PLAYS AND MUSICALS
MAN OF LA MANCHA (1965)
Borrowing the metafictive structure of Don Quixote (1605), on which it’s based, Man of La Mancha consists of a play within a play: imprisoned during the Spanish Inquisition, Cervantes and his fellow inmates decide to dramatize a story about an insane knight. The 1965 Tony Award–winning musical has been revived a number of times on Broadway and on London’s West End.
THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE (1989)
A staple of children’s theater, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe comes from the 1950 novel of the same name by C. S. Lewis, part of his Chronicles of Narnia series (1950–1956). As in the book, four human children discover a magical land of talking animals, wicked witches, and supernatural creatures. A version for two actors is enjoying a popular Off-Broadway run.
THE COLOR PURPLE (2004)
The Color Purple could just as easily have been slotted under best movies, so successful was the 1985 Steven Spielberg adaptation of the 1982 novel. But the beloved musical—produced by Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey, who also starred in the film—enjoyed an award-winning run on Broadway in the 2000s, followed by a world tour and a revival on Broadway from 2015 to 2017.
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME (2012)
Upon the play’s arrival from the West End in 2014, the New York Times called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time “one of the most fully immersive works ever to wallop Broadway.” Like the 2003 source novel, the theatrical adaptation focuses on a gifted autistic teen who tries to solve a mystery in his neighborhood, but it uses a play-within-a-play to do so.
NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 (2012)
Question: How do you adapt the lengthy, discursive War and Peace (1869) for the stage without forcing theatergoers to spend years of their lives watching the result? Answer: you focus on the devastating affair between Anatole and Natasha, heightening it with amazing music, raucous dancing, and performers who periodically thread through the audience.
BEST TELEVISION SHOWS
LONESOME DOVE (1989)
In a nice twist of fate, Larry McMurtry wrote the novel Lonesome Dove (1985) after his screenplay for a film version fell through in the 1970s. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a miniseries starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall. The series won several Emmys and Golden Globe Awards.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995)
“It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a person in want of a good project will adapt Pride and Prejudice—if not always to dazzling effect,” wrote a critic in 2014, nodding to the frequency with which Jane Austen’s 1813 novel has been adapted. Most viewers name the 1995 BBC series as their favorite, due in part to the terrific chemistry between Colin Firth as Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet.
GAME OF THRONES (2011–PRESENT)
HBO’s series based on A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–present) by George R. R. Martin is one of the most successful shows in the history of television, airing in more than 170 countries. Individual episodes cost upward of $15 million to produce, a reflection of the show’s gorgeous locations, excellent acting, epic battle scenes, and stunning, realistic CGI technology.
OUTLANDER (2014–PRESENT)
The same difficulty initially drives the Outlander television series on Starz as the Outlander novel series (1991–present): Will the time-traveling nurse Claire Randall stay in the 18th century or return to the 20th century? Both works become more complicated as they go on, arcing and bending in different ways, but each demonstrating a masterful hold on multiple genres.
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sp; THE HANDMAID’S TALE (2017–PRESENT)
To promote the first season of its show, Hulu hired red-cloaked handmaids to walk the streets of New York City. Starring Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid’s Tale became the first streaming series to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, in 2017. It updates the action of the 1985 novel to the present, making Margaret Atwood’s dystopian society seem all the more real.
The front cover of The Godfather, published in 1969.
Author Mario Puzo, photographed in 1979 in Malibu, California. Puzo began writing while he was in the US Army, and continued writing for pulp magazines in the 1950s and 1960s, before a publisher suggested he explore mafia themes.
A letter from Puzo to Marlon Brando, circa 1970, encouraging him to consider the role of the Godfather in an upcoming film that would be directed by Francis Coppola.
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THE GODFATHER
Mario Puzo · 1969
The Godfather (1969) didn’t start America’s love affair with gangsters, but the novel and subsequent movies certainly fanned the flames of ardor. In Vito Corleone and Michael, his straitlaced son turned crime boss, readers and viewers alike found idols worth worshipping.
Born to an Italian family in Hell’s Kitchen in 1920, Mario Puzo started writing stories and articles during his time in the US Army, and then worked for an array of pulp magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. A publisher encouraged him to explore the mafia as a subject, thinking it would sell well and help Puzo better support his wife and five children.