THE WILLOUGHBYS
By Lois Lowry
Houghton Mifflin, 2008
Category: Middle grade fiction
A month ago I offered to let my son read my new copy of THE WILLOUGHBYS, but he turned up his nose. I asked why and he told me, “I don’t usually like books with black and white-colored covers.”
I would have left it at that, but a few days later he happened to creep into my office in the wee hours. I was procrastinating from the morning’s work by reading a Boston Globe article about Lois Lowry. Suddenly I had a great idea for an experiment (aka more procrastination?). There was a link from the article, which was online, to an audio clip of Lois reading from THE WILLOUGHBYS …
Me: Hey, wanna hear something?
Unsuspecting son: What is it?
Me: An author reading from a book you might like.
Unsuspecting son: Sure.
I busied myself with actual work (!) until he was done listening.
Me: Well?
Unsuspecting son: Do we have the book?
Me, nonchalantly pulling my copy of THE WILLOUGHBYS off the shelf: Yep. Here it is. I hope you don’t mind a black and white cover.
Unsuspecting son, no longer unsuspecting: You tricked me!
Me: Hey, what would you like for breakfast?
The trickery, er, the experiment was a resounding success, though: he loved the book. I asked him to write a review for my blog, and this is what he turned in:
A couple of days ago I came downstairs early to see my Mom, and she tricked me into listening to a book clip. It was good and I liked one of the characters, Commander Melanoff, so I started the book. It was THE WILLOUGHBYS, by Lois Lowry. I started reading it and couldn’t stop! When I finally looked up it was time to get ready for school. I read when I was eating and on the bus. I finished after three days of reading. I was fascinated by the story. You should read THE WILLOUGHBYS.
All’s well that ends well, yes?