The Black Pages (Black Stars, #2)

by Nnedi Okorafor

Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean. —Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Those books had moldered underground, aged in the harsh sun, been nibbled at by termites over centuries, and then over the recent decades dried in this library. Their feathery pages were flimsy, thin, and near the ends of their current lives. Their next lives were as dust.

Blue was her color, and she was happiest during the hottest part of the day.

“Heat rises, but it also scorches the earth when it is hungry,” she said. “That fire is hungry.”

Education and the future were important, but family was the true elixir of life.

They seem to want to destroy all things that are about knowledge, history, and free thought.”

They want to erase the history of our people. They want to erase our ancestors.

“It’s black because it is so full of words, there is no space untouched.”