We were actually supposed to read the whole thing. I made it through about three quarters of the book, and from I know about it now, understood . . . maybe a third of it? I honestly thought I'd more or less just made it up in my head, having gone for years after that with no one else having ever heard of it. Knowing…

So when I was in 8th grade, we were given the assignment of doing a book report on any chapter book of our choosing (it was not a great school). I went to my local book store, and decided to select a sci-fi book (I didn't read a lot of sci-fi, so I decided to use the assignment as an excuse to get my feet wet). I…