Book as documentary …

In today’s Chil­dren’s Book-a-Day Almanac, Ani­ta Sil­vey talks about Noth­ing But the Truth, a book that looks at truth and lies. A com­ment on that arti­cle, writ­ten by Peter Lit­tel, offers an inter­est­ing per­cep­tion of the book:

“When I read Noth­ing But The Truth, I thought of it as a doc­u­men­tary nov­el. It reads as though Avi has lots of doc­u­men­tary film footage that he has care­ful­ly edit­ed to cre­ate a nar­ra­tive but with­out any voice over to influ­ence the read­er. It could eas­i­ly have become a one dimen­sion­al and didac­tic view of how many groups—students, fac­ul­ty, admin­is­tra­tion, par­ents, media, community—interact with each oth­er in high school. Instead Avi adds to the com­plex­i­ty of it all by show­ing the vari­ety of opin­ions and per­son­al­i­ties with­in each group and thus pro­vid­ing the read­er with ambiva­lence rather a clear lin­ear inter­pre­ta­tion. In oth­er words, true to life.”