Asking my 9 year old what books are about based on the cover

We were sitting in the living room and my son started asking me questions about my books, again, for the hundredth time. He’s never really been interested in the act of reading but he loves stories and is forever interested in whether or not i’ve read a book, what it’s about, who the characters are, and so on. He’s also insanely in tune to details. He’s always the first one to point out the smallest of things that no one notices. So, last night I decided to make this a game. I picked out 5 books that had covers that would interest him and told him to read the title, look at the cover, and tell me what it was about. The end results was something interesting! If you read ANY of his predictions, Every Heart A Doorway was the one that had my jaw on the floor!

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff was the first book I chose (naturally) and this is the one that started things off and made me realize this was going to be more interesting than I expected!! Here’s what he said:

“Well she’s a murderer. She’s got blood all over the knife and her hands. I think she likes to dig out people’s hearts. I also think she might be a ghost. There are shadow wings behind her and she has a white face. But she definitely likes to kill people.”

You’re not wrong son!

The Martian by Andy Weir is a movie that I think he would really like. After telling him what it was about in more detail, I think he’s really interested to see it! He started off with one assumption and kept on building until he got pretty damn close!! Here’s what he said:

“It’s about a person in space (wow captain obvious). He’s just floating there. It looks like there’s radiation or fire or something. It’s all red and orange, kind of like thermal. Or how you would see something in thermal imaging (yes, this is how he really talks). Oh wait! It’s red! Is he on Mars or something?”

Once again Mr Smarty Pants, you’ve pretty much got it!

The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is where I officially realized how much my constant ranting about Pluto and how much I love that tiny planet has rubbed off on him…… Here’s what he said:

“It looks like a person on earth that really wants to visit the Milky Way. Oh…. a small angry planet…… she also wants to go to Pluto. Pluto is a small planet. And it’s angry too since someone told it that it wasn’t a planet. Poor Pluto.”

Yes, buddy, poor Pluto. And it should be angry!

I picked up Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire, handed it to him and said “You’re not going to be able to figure out what this one’s about for sure.” He proceeded to essentially make me eat my words on a silver platter….. Here’s our conversation:

He looks at the book for a whole 2.5 seconds

“It’s about a portal”

My mouth drops and I quickly pick up the book to search the cover for the words portal fantasy. Before you look for yourself, it’s not there lol

“Wait! Why do you think that’s a portal?”

“Well there’s a doorway but there’s nothing on the other side. It opens to nowhere. That usually means that it’s a portal to somewhere else but you can’t see what it is until you go through the door.”

Me slowly inserts foot in mouth……

I’m still in shock about this one!!

The cover for My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix is one of my all time favourite covers!! There’s a ton of stuff happening on both the front and back of this book so I wanted to see what he was going to say about it all. Here’s what he said:

“I think this is about a girl that’s being stalked by someone. The person stalking her wants to hurt her or do something to her. Maybe the other girl too. Or maybe that girl is the one that wants to hurt her. She gets chased by a random person and tries to get away.”

Not quite but pretty dang close with this one!!

My son liked doing this SO much that he begged me for a solid half an hour to keep going and pulling books off the shelf so he could guess. It was nearly his bed time so that didn’t happen and he was pretty mad at me. I’m sure he will ask me repeatedly to do this again so be on the look out for part two of this lol

Until next time, happy reading!