Our Favorite Writers Share Their Favorite Childhood Books
John Haskell, author of OUT of MY SKIN, AMERICAN PURGATORIO, and I AM NOT POLLOCK
HOW BIG IS BIG. The title just about sums it up. This thin yellow book taught me, before I knew about microscopes, telescopes, or the existence of things I couldn’t see, a lesson in relativity. It starts with a child’s human body and moves up, past enormous elephants to mountain ranges to solar systems and then back down, past fleas and protozoa to the atoms that at time were the smallest things imaginable. It gave me a sense that there was always something else, something bigger or smaller, and it put the whole process of comparison in perspective.