Here are 100 books that How Tom Beat Captain Najork fans have personally recommended if you like
How Tom Beat Captain Najork.
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I like fiction which makes a character confront what the poet Thom Gunn called ‘the blackmail of his circumstances’: where you are born, the expectations of you. I like to think I am very much a self-created individual, but I can never escape what I was born into; the self is a prison that the will is trying to break out of. I like literature which reflects that challenge.
I find Tom Ripley such a wonderful character—a con man who commits crimes under the guise of someone else, a male protagonist written by a lesbian.
I love the levels of deception the reader is pulled in, so is on the side of the criminal throughout, hoping for him not to get caught in his awful, amoral behaviour.
It is a masterful use of the narrative voice in crime fiction at its best.
It's here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith's five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a "sissy." Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley's fascination with Dickie's debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie's ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game. "Sinister and strangely alluring"…
Zeni lives in the Flint Hills of Southeast Kansas. This tale begins with her dream of befriending a miniature zebu calf coming true and follows Zeni as she works to befriend Zara. Enjoy full-color illustrations and a story filled with whimsy and plenty of opportunity for discussions around the perspectives…
I’ve always felt myself to be different, odd, and a bit of a loner. As a child, people said I was "too clever by half," and I both hated and loved being able to understand things that other kids did not. Being good at maths and science in a girls’ boarding school does not make you friends! Escaping all that, I became a psychologist and, after a dramatic out-of-body experience, began studying lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, psychic claims, and all sorts of weird and wonderful experiences. This is why I love all these books about exceptional children.
What I love about this book is that Christopher is such an unusual child and sees the world in ways that most of us do not.
In reading this bizarre and disturbing mystery story, we begin to see the world differently ourselves. I like, too, the fact that what is different about him is never named – it’s not some specific diagnosis or categorization – he is just Christopher, the odd, mathematically gifted, strangely reacting, teenager.
When he becomes terrified of what we might take as quite ordinary events and places, I begin to feel some of his difference – to feel what it might be like to be so much an outsider. It helped me to remember that we are all different.
'Mark Haddon's portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement... Wise and bleakly funny' Ian McEwan
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the…
I grew up hearing Scottish folklore told as truth, stories of spirits, warnings, and strange kindnesses passed off as everyday fact. I have always been fascinated by the idea that there is something more, something hidden just out of sight. As a child I was scared of everything, so I forced myself to watch old Hammer horror films to toughen up. It worked a bit too well and left me with a lifelong love of the dark underside of things. Now, as a stand-up comedian and writer, I have learned there can be humour in anything, and sometimes the best way to make something real is to laugh at the awful.
This isn’t fantasy or supernatural, but the book really delves into the strangeness of people.
It starts as something mundane and ordinary until you scratch the surface. Full twists that genuinely caught me completely unaware, this book is a horror masterpiece that isn’t technically a horror.
And it has one scene that made me feel physically ill—that is amazing writing.
The polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath.
Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least:
Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim.
That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to…
Zeni lives in the Flint Hills of Southeast Kansas. This tale begins with her dream of befriending a miniature zebu calf coming true and follows Zeni as she works to befriend Zara. Enjoy full-color illustrations and a story filled with whimsy and plenty of opportunity for discussions around the perspectives…
I can’t count the number of conversations where I’ve been asked to slow down, or take a breath, or talk in a straight line. My neurodivergent heroes are versions of me: me if I were an alien, or a dying old lady, or a zombie. Gus is the closest I’ve come yet to writing my true self. He’s just me. I want readers who identify with Gus to feel seen and accepted and those who don’t—to understand what it’s like to live like this. And, just maybe, to have a little fun along the way.
Plot and style matter, but character is what I engage with. This book is a hilarious and touching portrait. Lionel Essrog doesn’t ‘suffer’ from Tourette’s Syndrome, but he happens to have it. He’s so natural that he completely normalizes his condition.
The plot involves an investigation that is told in Chandleresque prose, a very private-eye noir. Essrog is an unexpected narrator who nevertheless manages to own the story. I don’t use the phrase ‘pitch-perfect’ very often, but it fits here.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A complusively readable riff on the classic detective novel from America's most inventive novelist.
"A half-satirical cross between a literary novel and a hard-boiled crime story narrated by an amateur detective with Tourette's syndrome.... The dialogue crackles with caustic hilarity.... Unexpectedly moving." —The Boston Globe
Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, Lionel Essrog is an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo…
I am a retired professor of kinesiology at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. I am the former president of the North American Society for Sport History and vice-president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport, as well as a Fulbright Scholar. I have presented my research in more than three dozen countries and have over 250 publications, including 31 books, most of which pertain to sports history and sociology. I draw on my own history for inspiration and believe that sport has inspirational lessons for life.
This book examines the social control of Jewish immigrant youth in New York City through the use of supervised playgrounds that drew the children from street life to organized games and activities.
Sports taught rules and regulations, a WASP sense of morality and middle class values, and competition, which served as the basis for the capitalist economy. Sport served as an opiate for the masses, altering traditional work and leisure patterns, effecting a new social order, while it desecrated the Jewish Sabbath for some in the process of assimilation.
I live in my imagination. I never really grew out of seeing imaginary friends and fantastical elements in the world. Every budding flower or dancing sun shadow is a call to create. This is why I find children’s literature so thrilling and why my own writing often resides within the realm of make-believe. I love kids lit because it allows a grown-up like me to be a kid again – even if it’s just for a few pages.
Ruby’s Sword explores the type of imaginative play that can be had with natural world elements. Letting your kids explore nature in a tangible way does wonders for their learning and ingenuity. A simple stick turns into a sword, turning a little girl into a gallant knight. Our children do not need colourful plastic toys to have fun. All they need is a little fresh air and something as simple as a stick. Once my family moved out to the country, I saw my children transform before my eyes. Rocks have become treasures and bugs their newest friends. With the first signs of spring, socks are flung aside as their naked toes seek sand and grass. Let your kids fall in love with nature and it will be a love affair that lasts a lifetime.
Ruby is always racing after her big brothers. But no matter how hard she tries, she can never catch up. Then one day, she discovers some sticks in the grass. Not just any sticks-swords! And suddenly the world is her kingdom. Readers will cheer on Ruby's perseverance and creativity as they delight in the antics of the adorable animals that join her along the way. Anyone who has ever imagined themselves the star of their own swashbuckling adventure will find this sweet book irresistible.
Keiko Kasza is an award-winning author/illustrator of picture books. Though she uses animals as her book characters, the subjects are always related to issues that young children face. Humor and a surprise ending are the signatures of her work.
A monster goes to Pete’s house with the intention to eat him. Pete asks the monster to play with various games and toys. The monster reluctantly does so, but each time the text goes, “He didn’t want to play...because he wanted to...EAT PETE!” Then something shocking happens – he eats Pete! Let me assure you, though, the ending is very sweet.
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From the creator of Goodnight Goon, a laugh-out-loud friendship story that perfectly captures the high and low moments of a typical playdate!
Pete couldn't be more thrilled when a monster shows up in his bedroom. Now Pete has someone to play with! And the hungry monster couldn't be more thrilled to be there, either. Now he can . . . EAT PETE!
But Pete has other ideas. And they are all good fun and quite distracting--things like playing cars and pirates. Well, we all know the course of playing together nicely never did run smoothly. So how much longer will…
I hate rainy days, I check the weather forecast diligently to make sure I don’t have to go out on a rainy day. However I became a mother of two boys and with little kids, I had to go out rain or shine. My kids don’t get bothered by the rain, they rather love it, so I learned to enjoy the rainy days just like the grumpy old man from RainI And we enjoyed rainy day activities like drawing, reading about rainy day stories while cuddling on the sofa. These books remind me of those happy rainy days and they will certainly brighten up your rainy days.
These two girls’ everyday adventure series! I adore these twin books since I am a twin myself! Color penciled illustration is always beautiful but I like how Kaya draws the rain here. You can see a drizzle, a shower, a downpour, and even an upside-down rain here. Surely the rain hater like myself can become a rain person.
One cloudy day, Chirri & Chirra decide to go out on their bicycles. Dring-dring, dring dring! It's already starting to rain. As is each of their adventures, this one is completely magical and full of wonder. It is also set in a world where, as if by magic (though perhaps it's the force of the creative imagination?), they always find what they need. Pedaling along, they discover a shop. What luck! The sign says it's only open on rainy days. How perfect. Chirri & Chirra order tea. Each is served tea with a bowl of sweet ice rocks. It's a…
Unburdened with prejudice or beliefs, children are open to the world. I find great joy in books that reflect the child’s fresh perception and playful spirit. Such books have no intention to teach a moral lesson. They rejoice in freedom. In the non-stereotypical, not yet molded to conform reality of the child. Books beyond good or bad may shine with the light of freshness, the unfiltered seeing. In times of great political divisions, non-didactic books can be a window to the glorious amoral way of perceiving.
Two siblings with very different personalities. The fun of following these two characters grows with every scene. A very skillful, beautiful depiction of the richness of life and creative collaboration. A funny and endearing book.
We have seen a few great odd couples in picture books already, but filled with possibility as the world is, there's always room for one more pair, especially if they are as charming and unforgettable as these pigs, born from the brushes and prolific imagination of Kerascoet. Kerascoet lives and works in Paris in the worlds of cartooning and illustration. Best known for illustrating the book Miss Don't Touch Me written by Hubert, as well as a couple of the Lewis Trondheim Dungeon books, their most recent book Beautiful Darkness broke out on the US scene in 2014, winning them…
Before I was an author-illustrator, I was an elementary school teacher for many years. One of my favorite things about teaching was reading to students and helping them find books they love. Seeing kids connect with books motivated me to write and illustrate books; the character Reggie is very much inspired by my young students! Humorous books with lots of pictures often get kids hooked on reading, which is why I’ve selected funny graphic novels for this list. There’s no shortage of great comics for kids, so I chose books I also would have loved as a kid–silly and sweet, starring animal characters with real, kid-like feelings.
Duck and Moose are a duo that immediately grabbed my attention and won my heart! This short graphic novel is filled with hilarious moments, and I especially love the theme about imaginary play (and compromise) which young readers and their grownups will surely relate to.
The second book in a laugh-out-loud early graphic novel series perfect for fans of Narwhal and Jelly! Quiet-loving Moose's life is turned upside down by free-wheeling Duck. The two will need to put their differences aside if they're ever going to be neighbors...or friends!
Moose loves playing astronaut. Imagining his helmet, his seatbelt, and rocketing off into space are his favorite things to do! One day, Moose invites Duck to play with him. But there’s just one problem—Duck doesn’t know how to use his imagination! Moose teaches him but soon becomes frustrated because Duck doesn’t play astronaut the “right” way.…
