When I was in third grade, my school counselor gave me two books. One was about a girl raised by dolphins. This girl is “rescued,” taught to use language and walk normally and generally act like a human. The other book was about a girl growing up in the nineteenth century who learns, suddenly, that it’s actually 1996: she’s been living in a kind of historical museum, as a living diorama, and now must enter the real world of telephones and cars in order to obtain lifesaving modern medicine for her community. Only later did I put two and two together. This was all happening a couple of months after Hurricane Katrina, at my evacuation school in Houston. I cried every morning, unconcerned that my parents had bigger things to worry about. I constantly faked (no, really experienced) stomachaches and headaches. The guidance counselor, I now understand, thought I’d relate to books about children wrenched bewilderingly and suddenly from their contained worlds. At the time, I simply resented the guidance counselor, and I above all resented the fact that I loved these two books: her plot against me had worked.