Rowling, J.K. The Tales of Beedle the Bard. New York: Scholastic, 2008.

Oh, I read this, too. My sister gave it to her boyfriend for Christmas. It took me an hour, and I was keeping up with The Family Man playing on the television the whole time, so I could have finished sooner. Then dinner was on, and I missed how it ended. How did it end, can you remember? Nic Cage "goes back" to his flashy life, but surely he gets with Téa Leoni at the end, right? Does he have his, like, designer briefs and eat them, too?

This book contains the following word: simulacrum. I learned this word, oh, four years ago, only after poring over Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation for what was assuredly a failed paper on the use of same in Saunders's short fiction. I was twenty-six at the time. That kids who got this book for Christmas (or my sister's thirtysomething boyfriend, somewhat of a kid himself) will be learning such a word at such a young age is kind of cool.

I wonder how, in their silent reading minds, they'll pronounce this word. I read Catcher in the Rye at age 12, a hand-me-down from my H.S.-senior sister (the other sister), and when I got to the word sonuvabitch I pronounced it /sawn-YOO-vuh-bitch/. I went to my sister (the same other one, the older one) and asked her, "What's a sonuvabitch?" And I had to go grab the book and show her the word before she knew what I was asking her and was able to laugh, fully, in my face.