Books from Natalie Portman

Foster

An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the USIt is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
For our December pick, I’m excited for us all to read Claire Keegan’s Foster — the story of a young girl sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland while her mother carries another child to term in a house already bustling with siblings.
Books from Natalie Portman

Nothing Holds Back the Night

From the author of Underground Time, Delphine de Vigan, a novel based on her investigation into the life of her mercurial mother, in the wake of her suicide
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
For our January pick, excited for us all to read Nothing Holds Back the Night, an exploration of family secrets as Delphine de Vigan relies on interviews, recordings, and her own imagination to reconstruct her mother’s life, a woman who battled with mental illness and was largely unknowable to Vigan.
Books from Natalie Portman

Martyr!

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.” —Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of There There“The best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.” —Lauren Groff, best-selling author of Matrix and Fates and FuriesCyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
This book vibrates with love of life, beauty and language.
Books from Natalie Portman

Trust

WINNER of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for FictionLonglisted for the Booker PrizeOne of Barack Obama's Favourite Books of the YearThe Sunday Times BestsellerTrust is a sweeping puzzle of a novel about power, greed, love and a search for the truth that begins in 1920s New York.Can one person change the course of history?A Wall Street tycoon takes a young woman as his wife. Together, they rise to the top in an age of excess and speculation. Now a novelist is threatening to reveal the secrets behind their marriage. Who will have the final word in their story of greed, love and betrayal?Composed of four competing versions of this deceptive tale, Trust by Hernan Diaz brings us on a quest for truth while confronting the lies that often live buried in the human heart.**Soon to be an HBO Limites Series starring Kate Winslet**'One of the great puzzle-box novels . . . a page-turner' – The Telegraph'Genius' – The Observer'Radiant, profound and moving' – Lauren Groff, author of Matrix'Metafiction at its best, unpredictable, clever and massively enjoyable' – The Sunday Times'Enthralling' – Daily Mail
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Our November pick Trust revolves around the Rasks, a secretive couple, and their rise to power during the Great Depression. Told through linked narratives spanning over a century, what begins as a novel shifts into memoir and autobiography as we seek to untangle fact from fiction. I’ve never read anything quite like this one — and I hope you’ll join me in reading this month!
Books from Natalie Portman

When We Cease to Understand the World

SELECTED FOR BARACK OBAMA’S SUMMER READING LIST‘A monstrous and brilliant book’ Philip Pullman‘Wholly mesmerising and revelatory... Completely fascinating’ William Boyd Sometimes discovery brings destructionWhen We Cease to Understand the World shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain.Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled lives we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness. Some of their discoveries revolutionise our world for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.With breakneck pace and wondrous detail, Benjamín Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to break open the stories of scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
I also loved Labatut’s last book, When We Cease to Understand the World, in case you haven’t read it yet!
Books from Natalie Portman

The MANIAC

“A contemporary writer of thrilling originality . . . The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty.” —The Washington Post “Darkly absorbing . . . A brooding, heady narrative that is addictively interesting.” —Wall Street Journal “What [Labatut] brings to the page is something almost indescribably layered and complex that feels like a genre unto itself.” —San Francisco ChronicleFrom one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AIBenjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Our October pick, The Maniac, centers around John von Neumann, the mathematician behind game theory, the atomic bomb, and a pioneer of AI. A fictionalized biography, Labatut’s novel explores the relationship between madness and reason.
Books from Natalie Portman

How to Love Your Daughter

How to Love Your Daughter
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Hila Blum's How to Love Your Daughter begins with a woman spying on her daughter and the grandchildren she's never met. I love the way Blum weaves in and out of timelines as the narrator examines memories and seeks to understand her daughter's estrangement.
Books from Natalie Portman

The Postcard

The Postcard
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Excited to introduce you to our May book pick — a saga of a Jewish family in search of home, written by one of my dear friends. When an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest home in Paris, including the names of relatives killed at Auschwitz, Anne sets out to discover who sent it and why.
Books from Natalie Portman

Biography of X

National Bestseller. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Named a best book of March by Apple Books and Amazon, and a most anticipated book by The New York Times, Esquire, The Guardian, Time, BuzzFeed, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and Chicago Review of Books“A major novel, and a notably audacious one.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times “It feels fairly rare for a novel to be hugely intelligent and moving and fun in equal measure, but with Biography of X, Catherine Lacey somehow—magically—makes the nearly impossible look easy.” —Lauren GroffFrom one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, CM, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM knows where X was born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, and which finally, in the present day, is being forced into an uneasy reunification. A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X’s widow, Biography of X follows CM as she traces X’s peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America’s divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. At last, when she finally understands the scope of X’s defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined. Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
When X, a polarizing and elusive artist, drops dead in her office, her grieving wife sets out to uncover the truth of X’s life. Part narrative fiction, part fake biography — Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X already feels wholly original and I can’t wait to discuss with you all.
Books from Natalie Portman

Fight Night

"Move over, Scout Finch! There's a new contender for feistiest girl in fiction, and her name is Swiv." -USA Today, "Best Books of the Year""Toews is a master of dialogue." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice"A revelation." -Richard Russo NPR Best Books of the Year * Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist * Indie Next Pick * Amazon Editors' Pick * Apple Book of the MonthFrom the bestselling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise novel about three generations of women.“You're a small thing,” Grandma writes, “and you must learn to fight.” Swiv's Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence, and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless and in the third term of a pregnancy; and for her granddaughter Swiv, a spirited nine-year-old who has been suspended from school. Cramped together in their Toronto home, on the precipice of extraordinary change, Grandma and Swiv undertake a vital new project, setting out to explain their lives in letters they will never send.Alternating between the exuberant, precocious voice of young Swiv and her irrepressible, tenacious Grandma, Fight Night is a love letter to mothers and grandmothers, and to all the women who are still fighting-painfully, ferociously- for a way to live on their own terms.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
A birthday gift from my parents and our July book pick, Miriam Toews's Fight Night is told from the voice of Swiv, a rebellious nine-year-old living in Toronto with her pregnant mother — who is raising Swiv while also caring for her own lively mother.
Books from Natalie Portman

The Netanyahus

WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION2021 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNERA NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2021 A KIRKUS BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021"Absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I’ve read in what feels like forever." —Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times Book Review Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959–1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Mixing fiction and nonfiction, Joshua Cohen’s novel follows an exiled Israeli scholar, Benzion Netanyahu, as he arrives in the US seeking an academic position. I absolutely love Cohen’s writing, and it’s a ripe time to be considering this family’s story. I hope you'll join me in reading!
Books from Natalie Portman

Israeli Soul

For their first major book since the trailblazing Zahav, Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook go straight to the food of the people--the great dishes that are the soul of Israeli cuisine. Usually served from tiny eateries, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, or market stalls, these specialties have passed from father to son or mother to daughter for generations. To find the best versions, the authors scoured bustling cities like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, and sleepy towns on mountaintops. They visited bakeries, juice carts, beaches, even weddings. Their finds include meals in the hand like falafel and pita; juicy, grilled and roasted spice-rubbed meats; stuffed vegetables; a wealth of chopped vegetable salads; a five-minute fluffy hummus with more than two dozen toppings; pastries, ice creams, and shakes. Solomonov has perfected and adapted every recipe for the home kitchen. Each chapter weaves history with contemporary portrayals of the food. Striking photographs capture all its flavor and vitality, while step-by-step how-tos and closeups of finished dishes make everything simple and accessible.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…that holds the recipe to a favorite dish: Goldie falafel in Israeli Soul by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook.
Books from Natalie Portman

Baby-Sitters on Board! (The Baby-Sitters Club: Super Special #1)

The baby-sitters have a million adventures during their fabulous summer vacation which includes several days in Disneyland.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…I asked for one Chanukah as a kid: The Baby-sitter’s Club Super Special 1: Baby-sitters on Board! by Ann M. Martin.
Books from Natalie Portman

Outline

Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her student in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face great a great loss.Outline is the first book in a short and yet epic cycle - a masterful trilogy which will be remembered as one of the most significant achievements of our times.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…surprised me: That you can know much about a protagonist through the people around them: The Outline Trilogy (Outline, Transit, and Kudos) by Rachel Cusk.
Books from Natalie Portman

The Fire Next Time

A stirring, intimate reflection on the nature of race and American nationhood that has inspired generations of writers and thinkers, first published in 1963, the same year as the March on Washington“The finest essay I’ve ever read.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award winner Between the World and MeWith clarity, conviction, and passion, James Baldwin delivers a dire warning of the effects of racism that remains urgent nearly sixty years after its original publication. In the first of two essays, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” Baldwin offers kind and unflinching counsel on what it means to be Black in the United States and explains the twisted logic of American racism. In “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” Baldwin recounts his spiritual journey into the church after a religious crisis at the age of fourteen, and then back out of it again, as well as his meeting with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Throughout, Baldwin urges us to confront the oppressive institutions of race, religion, and nationhood itself, and insists that shared resilience among both Black and white people is the only way forward. As much as it is a reckoning with America’s racist past, The Fire Next Time is also a clarion call to care, courage, and love, and a candle to light the way.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…everyone should read because: You can’t understand the U.S. without it: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin.
Books from Natalie Portman

Weather

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONSHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG FICTION READERS AWARDAn obligatory note of hope, in a world going to hell Lizzie Benson, a part-time librarian, is already overwhelmed with the crises of daily life when an old mentor offers her a job answering mail from the listeners of her apocalyptic podcast, Hell and High Water. Soon questions begin pouring in from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of Western civilization. Entering this polarized world, Lizzie is forced to consider who she is and what she can do to help: as a mother, as a wife, as a sister, and as a citizen of this doomed planet."This is so good. We are not ready nor worthy" - Ocean Vuong
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…makes me feel seen: Weather by Jenny Offill.
Books from Natalie Portman

E E Cummings

Now presented in a beautiful new edition, Complete Poems 1904–1962 showcases E. E. Cummings’s transcendent body of work, collected in its entirety. This edition of E. E. Cummings’s Complete Poems contains all the poems published or designated for publication by the poet in his lifetime, including 36 poems that were first collected in the 1991 edition and 164 unpublished poems issued in 1983 under the title Etcetera. Combining Thoreau’s controlled belligerence with the brash abandon of an uninhibited bohemian, Cummings, together with Pound, Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, helped bring about the twentieth-century revolution in literary expression. Today, Cummings is recognized as the author of some of the most beautiful lyric poems in the English language as well as one of the most inventive American poets of his time—in the words of Richard Kostelanetz, “the major American poet of the middle-twentieth century.” Formally fractured and yet gleefully alive and whole, at once cubistic and figurative, Cummings’s work expanded the boundaries of what language is and can do.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…I consider literary comfort food: E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904-1962 edited by George J. Firmage.
Books from Natalie Portman

Poems of Jerusalem

Yehuda Amichai was born in Germany in 1924. His family left for Israel in 1936. Among the collections of his poetry that have appeared in English are Songs of Jerusalem & Myself, Travels, & The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai. He presently lives & teaches in Jerusalem. "He is one of our great poets...once one has heard his quiet, even tones, precise, distanced & passionate, one never forgets them." "I, for one, return to his poetry again & again, & always find myself shaken, as by something truly genuine & alive."
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…I’ve re-read the most: Poems of Jerusalem by Yehuda Amichai.
Books from Natalie Portman

Sister Outsider

The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deepThe revolutionary writings of Audre Lorde gave voice to those 'outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women'. Uncompromising, angry and yet full of hope, this collection of her essential prose - essays, speeches, letters, interviews - explores race, sexuality, poetry, friendship, the erotic and the need for female solidarity, and includes her landmark piece 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House'.'The truth of her writing is as necessary today as it's ever been' Guardian
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…should be on every college syllabus: Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde.
Books from Natalie Portman

The Phantom Tollbooth

With almost 5 million copies sold 60 years after its original publication, generations of readers have now journeyed with Milo to the Lands Beyond in this beloved classic. Enriched by Jules Feiffer’s splendid illustrations, the wit, wisdom, and wordplay of Norton Juster’s offbeat fantasy are as beguiling as ever. “Comes up bright and new every time I read it . . . it will continue to charm and delight for a very long time yet. And teach us some wisdom, too.” --Phillip PullmanFor Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason. Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams!
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…I’d pass onto my kid: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
Books from Natalie Portman

I Feel Bad About My Neck

With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself. The woman who brought us When Harry Met Sally . . ., Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Bewitched, and the author of best sellers Heartburn, Scribble Scribble, and Crazy Salad, discusses everything--from how much she hates her purse to how much time she spends attempting to stop the clock: the hair dye, the treadmill, the lotions and creams that promise to slow the aging process but never do. Oh, and she can't stand the way her neck looks. But her dermatologist tells her there's no quick fix for that. Ephron chronicles her life as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent. She recounts her anything-but-glamorous days as a White House intern during the JFK years ("I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House that the President did not make a pass at") and shares how she fell in and out of love with Bill Clinton--from a distance, of course. But mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age. Utterly courageous, wickedly funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling, I Feel Bad About My Neck is a book of wisdom, advice, and laugh-out-loud moments, a scrumptious, irresistible treat.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…made me laugh out loud: I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron.
Books from Natalie Portman

The Cost of Living

The bestselling exploration of the dimensions of love, marriage, mourning, and kinship from two-time Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy.A New York Times Notable BookA New York Public Library Best Nonfiction Book of 2018What does it cost a woman to unsettle old boundaries and collapse the social hierarchies that make her a minor character in a world not arranged to her advantage?This vibrant memoir, a portrait of contemporary womanhood in flux, is an urgent quest to find an unwritten major female character who can exist more easily in the world. Levy considers what it means to live with meaning, value, and pleasure, to seize the ultimate freedom of writing our own lives, and reflects on the work of such artists and thinkers as Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin, Elena Ferrante, Marguerite Duras, David Lynch, and Emily Dickinson.The Cost of Living, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal in Nonfiction, is crucial testimony, as distinctive, witty, complex, and original as Levy’s acclaimed novels.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
…currently sits on my nightstand: The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy.
Books from Natalie Portman

Sapiens

**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER** What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? This bestselling history challenges everything we know about being human.Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us.In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we’re going. ‘I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species’ Bill Gates ‘Interesting and provocative... It gives you a sense of how briefly we’ve been on this Earth’ Barack Obama**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
The book that:…shaped my worldview: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
Books from Natalie Portman

Where the Red Fern Grows

A beloved classic that captures the powerful bond between man and man’s best friend. Billy has long dreamt of owning not one, but two, dogs. So when he’s finally able to save up enough money for two pups to call his own—Old Dan and Little Ann—he’s ecstatic. It doesn’t matter that times are tough; together they’ll roam the hills of the Ozarks.Soon Billy and his hounds become the finest hunting team in the valley. Stories of their great achievements spread throughout the region, and the combination of Old Dan’s brawn, Little Ann’s brains, and Billy’s sheer will seems unbeatable. But tragedy awaits these determined hunters—now friends—and Billy learns that hope can grow out of despair, and that the seeds of the future can come from the scars of the past. Praise for Where the Red Fern Grows A Top 100 Children’s Novel, School Library Journal's A Fuse #8 ProductionA Must-Read for Kids 9 to 14, NPRWinner of Multiple State AwardsOver 7 million copies in print! “Very touching.” —The New York Times Book Review “One of the great classics of children’s literature . . . Any child who doesn’t get to read this beloved and powerfully emotional book has missed out on an important piece of childhood for the last 40-plus years.” —Common Sense Media “An exciting tale of love and adventure you’ll never forget.” —School Library Journal “A book of unadorned naturalness.” —Kirkus Reviews “Written with so much feeling and sentiment that adults as well as children are drawn [in] with a passion.” —Arizona Daily Star “It’s a story about a young boy and his two hunting dogs and . . . I can’t even go on without getting a little misty.” —The Huffington Post “We tear up just thinking about it.” —Time on the film adaptation
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
The book that:…made me sob uncontrollably (as a kid): Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.