Little Children, by Tom Perrotta

This one is continuing my kick of reading the book and seeing the movies and comparing. We'll move the movie to the top of our Netflix list as soon as it's available, and I'm planning to place holds on Perrotta's other books (including Election, which was a terrific movie) soon.

When I picked this book up from the library, I had an eerie moment of recognition, which I explained away as simply recognizing the cover from the LAPL website. It's pretty distinctive: a field of perfectly manicured grass with two smiley goldfish crackers looking at each other. Then I started to read it.

I have read this before. I can't remember exactly when, but certainly in the last two years. I tend not to retain large parts of the stories, though, so it was almost like reading a new book, but with lovely moments of remembering.

I really liked this one, and I'm eager to see what the movie is like. It seems like adapting it wouldn't have been too difficult; it's a fairly contained story, with a minimum of characters and locations. The characters are marvelously complex, and easily recognizable. There are scenes early in the book of mothers gathering at a park and more or less judging each other, which I remember from my nannying days.

Highly recommend this one.