THE MANY ASSASSINATIONS OF SAMIR, THE SELLER OF DREAMS

Author: Daniel Nayeri

Illustrator: Daniel Miyares

Pages: 224

Publisher: Levine Querido. $ 21.99

For ages: 8 to 12 The story, or the story of the story?

Stories about stories go farther back than the Silk Road — and likely traveled along it as well. From the East, consider Hinduism’s “Mahabharata” ( fourth century) and Islam’s “The Thousand and One Nights” ( ninth century). From the West, Homer’s epics, and any one of Shakespeare’s plays. In the sciences, Galileo framed his 17th- century critique of planetary science as a conversation between three characters; the book is titled “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” and transforms his intellectual skepticism into an informal chat.

In children’s literature, two Salman Rushdie novels are centered on storytelling: “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” and “Luka and the Fire of Life.”

It seems noteworthy that Monkey is the same age as Rushdie’s Luka and Nayeri’s Khosrou, the protagonist of his previous, autobiographical novel, “Everything Sad Is Untrue.” These boys are young, scattered, playful, impatient. Ideal narrators to do two things at once: tell us a story and tell us that they’re telling us a story, with asides, questions and inaccuracies.

Nayeri said in an interview that he wanted to present Khosrou as someone who “never takes a breath; he’s desperate to tell everything. He’s racing against time, meaning he’s racing against you losing interest in him. He’s got you by the scruff and he has to hold on.”

This applies beautifully to Monkey as well: Both boys are trying to win over an audience using stories. It is stories that keep them connected to the people they love, stories that define and reassure them, stories that are the key to their freedom.