Have you ever been curious to what kind of poems and tales would be in Wednesday Addams' library?

     Book Commentary by Shanna Nayely Duay

    When I was younger, I had a huge thing for the Addams family and loved the idea of a character like Wednesday Addams. Especially in my fifth-grade year, I was fascinated with grim tales and fables and I enjoyed reading books of that nature. So when the annual book fair rolled around and a book titled The Addams Family: Wednesday's Library caught my eye, I knew I had to have it.

    The Addams Family: Wednesday's Library was a book aimed to compile different works that the character Wednesday Addams would find interesting. The collection is comprised of works from authors I was familiar with like Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. But it was also the first time I was introduced to ones like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, and Joseph Conrad. Stories like Dracula, Jane Eyre, Heart of Darkness, and The Divine Comedy were featured, with the addition of the character Wednesday's comments and annotations. 

    The book was a great introduction for me to complex styles of writing and literature in a genre I was very fond of and enthralled by. The dark theming of her library kept me up for many nights, not out of fear but of interest. I found myself gravitating back to this book last summer, and the reread felt just as good as the first time if not better as I came back with more knowledge of the language. I'd recommend this anthology to those captivated by the unsettling and terrible, or to those who could see themselves enjoying an introduction. I thought I'd end this book commentary with some quotes from our very own The Scarlet Letter along with Wednesday Addam's remarks.

"In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it ... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt." 

SOMETIMES I FIND MYSELF FEELING LIKE A GHOST, TOO. BUT IN A GOOD WAY.

"She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness... Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers— stern and wild ones— and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss."

SHAME, DESPAIR, SOLITUDE! THEY ARE TEACHERS TO US ALL. 

"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."

I DON'T REALLY NEED TO WORRY ABOUT A PROBLEM LIKE THIS BECAUSE THE ONLY FACE I PRESENT TO MYSELF OR THE PUBLIC IS ... DISDAIN.