Let’s begin the week with a feel good story, so good that it will give you positive associations with orange. Not that orange. Tommy Orange, author of the highly acclaimed There There who just released a new, highly acclaimed novel. Our story begins with a pony-tailed Bronx high school English teacher who has been assigning There There for years, and who lobbed in a 827-word cold email request to Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau. The cold email got a warm response. That’s what gets us to the crux of the story; a classroom of high school students experiencing a novel experience: they’re there with their favorite author. And Orange himself may have been the one who enjoyed being there the most. NYT (Gift Article): A Bronx Teacher Asked. Tommy Orange Answered. “It’s not often that an author walks into a room full of readers, let alone teenagers, who talk about characters born in his imagination as if they’re living, breathing human beings. And it’s equally rare for students to spend time with an author whose fictional world feels like a refuge. Of all the classroom visits he’s made since ‘There There’ came out in 2018, the one at Millennium Art Academy earlier this month was, Orange said later, ‘the most intense connection I’ve ever experienced.'” We’ve all followed the infuriating, politically-motivated increase in the number of banned books in America. I thought I’d share a story that is the opposite of that one. Orange you glad I did?