The Poe twins “[believe] that oddities and seeming coincidences [are] actually the world’s way of communicating secret messages” (41). Even though “[a]dults usually [categorize] such thinking as ‘overactive imagination’. . . . the boys [know] that if you consider everything with … [Read more...]
The Queen of Hearts
When the boys secretly transform their homeschool room on the day of the school district official’s visit, their Aunt Judith’s reaction surprises them. Edgar and Allan call her “the Queen of Hearts” (60). Why? What surprises you, if anything, about Aunt Judith’s parenting … [Read more...]
The Great Beyond
One of the funniest aspects of The Tell-Tale Start is the way the book’s author, Gordon McAlpine, imagines the afterlife as a vast office building full of deceased famous people from history. In “the Great Beyond,” Edgar Allan Poe writes messages for fortune cookies, signs, and … [Read more...]