Every Thing On It
by Shel Silverstein
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Shel Silverstein’s black-and-white illustrations and “wacky rhymes” have for decades been “winning over even the most poetry-averse of kid readers,” said Molly Driscoll in CSMonitor.com. Twelve years after Silverstein’s death comes this collection of unpublished works, which find the author in fine form. The final poem ends on a valedictory note: “When I am gone what will you do? / Who will write and draw for you? / Someone smarter—someone new? / Someone better—maybe you?”
The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man
by Michael Chabon
(HarperCollins, $18)
Novelist Michael Chabon has written his first book for “the mac-and-cheese crowd,” said Susan Carpenter in the Los Angeles Times. Like Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Awesome Man is “clearly inspired” by classic comic books. But beneath Awesome Man’s “square jaw, barrel chest, and epic battles with his archnemesis, the Flaming Eyeball,” he also comes across as winningly child-like. “Sometimes Awesome Man just wants to call his mom.”
Wildwood
by Colin Meloy
(Balzer + Bray, $18)
Colin Meloy, lead singer of indie rock band the Decembrists, has created a “fantastical, Narnia-esque pastiche of talking animals, precocious children, and swashbuckling adventure,” said Sharyn Vane in The Austin American-Statesman. Meloy’s inventive debut sends young Prue McKeel into a mythic Portland, Ore., forest to retrieve her baby brother, who’s been abducted by a murder of crows. No mere attempt by a celebrity to cross over, Wildwood is a “true contribution to children’s literature.”
The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman
by Meg Wolitzer
(Dutton, $17)
“The author of The Uncoupling and The Ten-Year Nap departs from gender politics and other grown-up obsessions” with this “pitch-perfect story” about kids in the world of competitive Scrabble, said Meghan Cox Gurdon in The Wall Street Journal. Duncan Dorfman is no wizard, but he has a magical talent: His fingertips can “read” Scrabble tiles just by feeling them, making the outcast kid a sought-after teammate. His tale is studded with “sparkling dialogue, ingenious anagrams, and a daub of mystery.”
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Settling the West Bank: a death knell for a Palestine state?In the Spotlight The reality on the ground is that the annexation of the West Bank is all but a done deal
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Sudoku medium: August 23, 2025The Week's daily medium sudoku puzzle
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Sudoku hard: August 23, 2025The Week's daily hard sudoku puzzle
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”