Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Themes

Almost 3,000 people died during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Upwards of 20,000 people died during the firebombing of Dresden, Germany in 1945. And as many as 166,000 people lost the...

For a kid, Oskar spends a lot of time thinking about the nature of existence and the meaning of life. Because his nonstop brain is always thinking, he's got way too much existential anxiety for som...

Kids love solving puzzles. There are a bunch of classic kids' puzzles: Put the circle-shaped peg in the circular hole. Assemble a map of the United States. Find the lock that fits the key your dead...

When they're not watching Digimon, nine-year-olds "are able to write and read skillfully, and […] able to read different types of fictional and non-fictional works, including biographies, poems,...

Grief and death seem to overwhelm love in much of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The most strongly expressed feelings for love are sometimes saved for people who are dead: in Oskar's case, hi...

New York City can be a scary place: taxis honking at you to hurry up and cross the street. Hundreds of people crammed onto the subway at rush hour. The long, long line for cronuts. It was an e...

It's hard to stand out in a city with over 8 million people, but millions of New Yorkers (the people, not the magazine) find a way to do it every day. Even if hundreds of them are named "Black." In...

Great heroes often find themselves in a position where they have to lie. "These are not the droids you are looking for." "I don't know what happened… I was watering my plant…" "I'm diabetic and...