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Published October 16, 2015 at 9:00 a.m.
I'll admit it. I picked up The Book With No Pictures off the shelf at the library because it was written by B.J. Novak, of The Office fame. When I showed my husband, he gave it an eye roll.
“That’s just a cheap trick. That’s just another famous celebrity who takes advantage of being famous and gets a book published,” he said. And he’s an even bigger fan of The Office than I am.
But he had a point. A few weeks ago I eagerly opened up Jimmy Fallon’s new children’s book, Dada, only to feel disappointed that there wasn’t anything in the book that knocked my socks off like a Fallon vs. Timberlake lip-sync battle.
But Novak also has a critically acclaimed adult book to his name, so I decided to try this one out with my girls. 5-year-old Hadley was intrigued by the idea of a book with no pictures. We had recently started reading Charlotte’s Web but this book looked different than a chapter book. It looked like, well, a picture book.
“That’s just a cheap trick. That’s just another famous celebrity who takes advantage of being famous and gets a book published,” he said. And he’s an even bigger fan of The Office than I am.
But he had a point. A few weeks ago I eagerly opened up Jimmy Fallon’s new children’s book, Dada, only to feel disappointed that there wasn’t anything in the book that knocked my socks off like a Fallon vs. Timberlake lip-sync battle.
But Novak also has a critically acclaimed adult book to his name, so I decided to try this one out with my girls. 5-year-old Hadley was intrigued by the idea of a book with no pictures. We had recently started reading Charlotte’s Web but this book looked different than a chapter book. It looked like, well, a picture book.
This article was originally published in Seven Days' monthly parenting magazine, Kids VT.
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