When her son's seventh-grade teacher said a "good book should make you cry," Feinberg started to wonder. After she noticed her son's reluctance to read school-assigned novels—Newbery Award–winning books like Creech's Walk Two Moons
or Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia
—she read them herself and discovered the "problem novel," a "subgenre of the realistic adolescent novel," which often features a youngster facing horrible difficulties—incest, domestic abuse, rape, death or disease of parents, etc.—without the aid of any sympathetic adult, without "recourse to fantasy." Educators push these parables, Feinberg says, believing children need to abandon fantasy and learn to "cope" with reality. This campaign starts quite young, as Feinberg found when her daughter invited her to her second grade's "publishing party." Listening to these children reading their "memoirs"—as if eulogizing their own childhoods—Feinberg began to question the philosophy behind the Calkins writing workshop system used in so many schools. Why do children need experts to tell them how to write about the world, she wondered? Yes, it's good to learn to observe the world closely, but Calkins's "orchestration of the poetic moment" struck Feinberg as too didactic. Rarely can teachers reject the curriculum's "problem novels," nor can they refuse the Calkins system. But Feinberg, who's spent years working with children in a creativity workshop she designed, has the independence and experience to raise important questions. Her critique, delivered in the palatable form of a chatty parenting memoir, should stir some much-needed controversy, especially among "progressive" educators. (Aug.)
Forecast:
The implications of this small book are quite large. Parents will want to read it, as will writers, publishers and educators. A blurb from Mary Pipher could help sales.
