Where's Spot? and Ender's Game

Where's Spot? is a book for children about a dog looking all over the house for her puppy, Spot.

Ender's Game is a book about children in a military academy in space in training and at war with an alien race.

Both books won awards in their time, are praised for a simplicity that approaches parable, and spawned and empire of sequels, merchandise, and optioned movie deals.

None of the sequels are of the same caliber of the original works. The first books, perhaps out of a naivety shared by author, narrator, and protagonist, capture a rhythm and a tone that is memorable and hints at universal stories, stories of searching for a loved one or of raging against the man behind the curtain. The later books tell rather than show. They force rather than invite the reader to respond in the proscribed manner. They make the original books seem more like a lucky jackpot of good writing than those progenitor books seemed on first reading.