Browsing: Mark Walden

If you took everything that was coolest about James Bond, got rid of the foolishness about girls and martinis that fifth grade boys have no patience for anyway, and then, in a stroke of genius, got rid of James Bond, too, leaving just the villains, back when they were about thirteen, when they were just getting started, then you’d have “H.I.V.E. The Higher Institute of Villainous Education.”

Sometimes, as I ponder tactics for encouraging the “reluctant readers” in my life (typically late-elementary through middle-school boys), I cast my mind back to an earlier generation’s paragon of averseness, Mikey [Life cereal commercial]. Only instead of confronting Mikey with healthy breakfast cereal, in my imagination, I confront him with fiction.