‘It’s incredible,’ said Josh. ‘With a photo novel you can get the same pictures as in the movie, but you take it at your own pace, and it’s better than the movie because you can actually see what they’re thinking. Like Danny Zuko might be saying, “Yeah, I’d love to meet your parents, Sandy”, but the thought balloon tells another story.’

‘I have mice’, Josh told his landlord.
    ‘That’s because you leave the windows open’, the landlord said.
    ‘That would only make sense if I had bats.’
    Josh’s landlord was not a man of reason.

Frieda was going away and he wanted to fill her with hamburgers, milkshakes and fries like it all was light.

Chick dreamt that they had made him the pope.
    ‘I can’t speak Latin’, he kept telling them.
    He sat in the park, all dressed up like the pope. He felt very lonely and depressed about it.

At Hanukkah his mother sent him latkes. There were no more paper towels. Josh ate them out of the empty cardboard tube. He pretended it was a Pez dispenser.

‘My dad once took me to a movie when I was ten’, Josh said. ‘It was Passover and we weren’t allowed to eat popcorn. That popcorn smelled like God to me. God was right there and he was begging us to eat him.’