Christopher Hitchens Creates Reading List for 8-Year-Old Girl

By Jason Boog 

hitchens.pngLast month at the Texas Freethought Convention, author Christopher Hitchens spent 15 minutes creating a reading list for an eight-year-old girl named Mason Crumpacker.

For your weekend reading pleasure, Chron.com collected the books on the reading list: “Dawkins’ Magic of Reality, Greek and Roman myths, particularly those compiled by Robert Graves, anything satirical by Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (author of Infidel and Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations), PG Wodehouse (“for fun”), David Hume, and Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.”

Suzie Harmon photographed the moment. Crumpacker’s mother wrote into the Why Evolution Is True blog to explain what happen and how the event thrust her daughter into the media spotlight.

Her mother explained: “The conversation took place on an exhibit table just outside the ballroom as the banquet was coming to a close.  Mr. Hitchens and Mason were eye-to-eye.   I didn’t have a camera,  since I was so surprised by the spontaneity of the whole thing that I had left in my purse under the table in the ballroom, but I grabbed a program and took notes.  There is a perception that Christopher Hitchens gave Mason a list, but it wasn’t like that.  It was far more special and interesting…” Link via; photo via)