{"id":1687,"date":"2010-11-01T11:45:51","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T17:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=1687"},"modified":"2010-11-01T11:45:51","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T17:45:51","slug":"may-i-recommend-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=1687","title":{"rendered":"May I recommend&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Dragon-cover.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1688\" title=\"The Coming of the Dragon\" src=\"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Dragon-cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"265\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Dragon-cover.jpg 265w, https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Dragon-cover-198x300.jpg 198w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 265px) 100vw, 265px\" \/><\/a><strong><em>The Coming of the Dragon<\/em> by Rebecca Barnhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of my favorite memories from my collective English education, including high school and college, was a 10th grade unit on <em>Beowulf<\/em>.\u00a0 I had an amazing teacher, Ms. Aspacher (now Dafoe), and she brought the story to life for me.\u00a0 Here was the tale of one of the first true heroes written of in the English language, and something about the names and the words seized my imagination.\u00a0 If you want a villain that is quintessentially &#8220;Other,&#8221; and represents all that goes bump in the night, I can think of no better candidate than Grendel.<\/p>\n<p>So I was very excited when I had a chance to read an early draft of Rebecca Barnhouse&#8217;s second novel (you may remember that last year <a href=\"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=928\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I recommended her wonderful debut <em>Book of the Maidservant<\/em><\/span><\/a>).\u00a0 Her new book<em> <\/em> is not a retelling of <em>Beowulf<\/em>, but the story of a boy named Rune, who in the course of the novel finds his courage, learns who he is, and battles a dragon.\u00a0 This will be a great book for reluctant boy readers &#8211; it&#8217;s fast-paced, full of action and suspense.\u00a0 But it also has emotional depth, and raises a question that has been asked since the tale of\u00a0 <em>Beowulf<\/em> was first told: what makes a true hero?<\/p>\n<p>Available here: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9780375861932\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Indiebound<\/span><\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/search.barnesandnoble.com\/The-Coming-of-the-Dragon\/Rebecca-Barnhouse\/e\/9780375861932\/?itm=1&amp;USRI=the+coming+of+the+dragon\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">B&amp;N<\/span><\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.borders.com\/online\/store\/TitleDetail?sku=0375861939\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Borders<\/span><\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Coming-Dragon-Rebecca-Barnhouse\/dp\/0375861939\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1288633045&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Amazon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Coming of the Dragon by Rebecca Barnhouse<br \/>\nOne of my favorite memories from my collective English education, including high school and college, was a 10th grade unit on Beowulf.\u00a0 I had an amazing teacher, Ms. Aspacher (now Dafoe), and she brought the story to life for me.\u00a0 Here was the tale of one of the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mtjQ-rd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1697,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions\/1697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}