I can think of few writers whose prose reaches that exalted state described by Mill as completely as Franz Kafka. Prodigious at evoking brutal alienation and irrevocably hopeless despair, Kafka could mold with a handful of lines what others spend countless pages failing to create ¡½ a rare case of mere words, once arranged in painstaking order, arresting the reader like an arcane incantation. In sum: no fodder for a children's book.

And yet, ¡ÈMy First Kafka: Runaways, Rodents, and Giant Bugs,¡É is just such an enterprise. The book is slim, exquisitely illustrated in crisp black and white by Rohan Daniel Eason. Eason shows keen judgment, imbuing his illustrations with enough appeal and geniality to allay any fears while retaining a creeping, hardly perceptible sense of the macabre.

Read the full article here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2013/05/our-11-year-old-correspondent-reviews-my-first-kafka-runaways-rodents-and-giant-bu