Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

Oh, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

I'm here with Sapphire for the second week because I'm so excited that we're talking about the inside of her novel, The Kid.

You know, one of the reasons I'm so excited is that a very rare thing has happened.

There's popular fiction, and we all like it when there's good fiction.

It's popular fiction.

But I believe that Sapphire is an artist, not only that she wants to be an artist, but she is an artist in this book,

The Kid, is a work of art, which is to say that it has invisible structure and form,

that it's built to be not just read but reread, because the author has given it,

not just a heart, but a soul and a mind, and all of these things are part of the making of a work of art and part of the making of a dense and memorable character.

When I read Push, I said to myself, when is the last time we had a character in American fiction?

A character as big and vibrant as Hawk or Holden or any of the others?

Well, that's precious.

Here's the kid.

His name is...

Abdul Jamal Lewis Jones.

...