like guys I'm serious. it's an amazing book. formative, changed-my-childhood-brain book. it doesn't talk down to its child audience. it has lush descriptions and imagery. the characters are complex and layered. I wanted to find those candle trees (espaliered pear trees as described by a 14-year-old in an alternate universe) so badly, as an adult, and when I saw them at the Cloisters for the first time, I cried
and the movie adaptation is, by comparison, an example of early 2000s anti-intellectualism. in this essay I will