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Book News: Anger Over 'Superman' Author Who Condemns Homosexuality

An image from the cover of the first issue of <em>Superman</em>.
DC Comics
/
AP
An image from the cover of the first issue of Superman.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

  • DC Comics has tapped Orson Scott Card, the Ender's Game author who has said homosexuality is "deviant behavior," to write for its new, digital-first Superman. That has sparked outrage among fans. Card also suggested in a 2004 essay that if same-sex marriage is legalized, "our civilization will collapse or fade away."
  • Eric Carle, the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, is coming out with a new book this fall.
  • A school in Brooklyn will be named after Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak.
  • "The only items there truly unfamiliar to me were two wire racks full of paperbacks, their covers each backlit with the golden glow of God's everlasting presence and bucolic perfection: wheat fields, corn fields, rivers and barns beneath cerulean or honey skies. A plain-clothed woman in some state of muted emotional duress gazed into the middle distance beneath her white bonnet. I spun through the racks, elated, repulsed. Could there be anything better, or worse, than Amish romance novels?" — Rachel Yoder, on Amish romance novels.
  • Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak makes emergency parking announcements with poetry: "Since this is the week/To say je t'aime/Move her car off the even side/By 8 a.m./(Plowing on even side starts at 8 am)."
  • Morning Edition's Renee Montagne interviews John Borling, an Air Force fighter pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam who spent more than six years in a North Vietnamese prison composing poetry without paper or pencils. He says the resulting book of poetry is a testament to "power of the unwritten word."
  • Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Former POW John Borling talks with Renee Montagne

    Annalisa Quinn is a contributing writer, reporter, and literary critic for NPR. She created NPR's Book News column and covers literature and culture for NPR.