Last week, Slate had an article about how children should be taught to read literature. My daughter and I tried out the “treat each book as a mystery” approach on Goodnight Gorilla with mixed results. We decided that the gorilla represented man’s complex relationship with nature, but we’re still not sure what to make of the mouse with the banana on a string.

In yesterday’s NYT Book Review, Neal Pollack (who is on book 28 for the year) had an essay about his McSweeney Years and losing his persona.