The Hour I First Believed

Lamb, Wally. The Hour I First Believed. New York: HarperColliuns 2008. Print.

First Sentences:

They were both working their final shift at Blackjack Pizza that night, although nobody but the two of them realized it was that. Give them this much: they were talented secret-keepers.


Description:

This is a very difficult book for me to review and recommend. It is probably not for everyone since the backdrop is the shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. Given this violent background setting, this book probably doesn't sound like anything a sane person would want to read any more about, particularly if it's a 700-page historical novel. 

I, too, was one of those hesitant readers. But my interest in author Wally Lamb after reading his book, She's Come Undone, made me want to give The Hour I First Believed at least a fair try (you know, look at the first couple of sentences). And those words were enough to hook me.

I quickly realized that The Hour I First Believed was not simply a re-telling of that horrific incident, but rather a character study and journey towards recovery for one couple who experienced the shooting and the ensuing repercussions. The shooting itself is not completely avoided, of course. It is retold in bits and pieces, framed with some background information from the killers' actual diaries, videos, and interviews. So I kept reading and reading, becoming more and more involved in the main characters, their thoughts, fears, frustrations, and hopes.

The book centers on the fictional narrator, Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, both long-time employees at Columbine High School. Caelum is a literature teacher while Maureen is the school's nurse. On the day of the shooting, Caelum was away from Colorado for a conference. But after seeing a live TV breaking news report on the shooting, he speeds homne, trying desperately to learn about the safety of this wife. He soon finds that Maureen, while safe, experienced first-hand the murderous boys words and actions, as well as saw their victims, most of whom she knew as students or as colleagues and friends. 

And after, she becomes a changed person....as does her husband.

We readers, through Caelem's stream-of-consciousness observations and interactions, follow this damaged couple as they try to address Maureen's new personality and fears, both together and singly. Each wonders whether they have done anything to have foreseen this tragedy or somehow acted to prevent even a small part of it. Questions, guilt, accusations, and self-examination fill their minds. 

In the days, week, months, and years, now, since they opened fire, I have searched wherever I could for the whys, hows, and whether-or-nots of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's rampage. They had been my students first, but I became theirs, stalking them so that I might rescue my wife from the aftermath of what they'd done.

And the couple must deal with other issues as well. Caelum is called on to settle the Connecticut estate and home of his recently-deceased aunt who helped raise him. Along the way, Caelum discovers documents, letters, and diaries in her attic  which reveal his true family history and heritage. Maureen, meanwhile, is trying to re-connect with a troubled student who disappeared during the shooting, as well as recover enough herself to return to work nursing.

You never really forgive yourself. At least I haven't ben able to. But if you can find ways to be useful to others, you can begin to figure out how to live inside your own skin, no matter what you did.

It's not a feel good read by any means, but definitely a fascinating, compelling character study of people dealing with trauma, never an easy process. It is also a well-researched depiction in what happened at Columbine, what it was like for the people who actually experienced it, and how those incidents affected one fictional couple, one community, and many, many lives ever after.

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Read, Shelley. Go As a River.   

A small town girl in rural Colorado has her life changed after one chance encounter which she must face and address for the rest of her life. (Previously reviewed here.)

Teacher Man

McCourt, Frank. Teacher Man: A Memoir. New York: Scribner 2005. Print

First Sentences:

Here they come.

And I'm not ready.

How could I be?

I'm a new teacher and learning on the job.

On the first day of my teaching career, I was almost fired for eating the sandwich of a high school boy. On the second day I was almost fired for mentioning the possibility of friendship with a sheep. Otherwise, there was nothing remarkable about my thirty years in the high school classrooms of New York City.


Description:

I think these introductory sentences to Frank McCourt's Teacher Man are the perfect words to pull readers into this delightful memoir. Immediately, you are presented with author McCourt's fear of the first day of school, his not-so-understated terror of being ill-prepared and unqualified, along with teasers about outrageous events that occurred on his first two days. With the statement that McCourt taught school for thirty years, any reader interested in schools and teachers must lick their lips in anticipation of reading many, many more stories about his unusual adventures in the classroom.

Teaching is the downstairs maid of professions. Teachers are told to use the service door or go around the back. They are congratulated on having ATTO (All That Time Off). They are spoken of patronizingly and patted, retroactively, on their silvery locks....Dream on, teacher. You will not be celebrated.

And what adventures he has. After a bit of background from his first 27 years of life as an Irish immigrant, McCourt starts his teaching career in inner-city schools due to his lack of experience. There they call him "Teacher Man." He finds the only way to get through each period and keep the kids' attention is to tell them stories of his youth in Ireland. Not exactly a topic on the curriculum for vocational schools, but he survives for awhile until he just gives up and tries to pursue an advanced degree in Ireland at a Protestant university (he's Catholic) with not too surprising of results.

Finally he lands a job in a prestigious school, one of the best in New York and maybe the country, where students are motivated and preparing for major tests towards their hoped-for acceptance into top Ivy League colleges. Needless to say, his Irish stories and tendency to be distracted into unconventional tangents again land him in hot water. His classes are extremely popular, but he wonders whether it is because he's such a great teacher or because he is such a pushover grader and wandering lecturer? And worst of all, he cannot fulfill the principal's expressed direction to show students how to diagram sentences (which McCourt had never come close to mastering). He soon finds there are other problems with teaching.

If you asked all the students in your five classes to write three hundred and fifty words each then you had 175 multiplied by 350 and that was 43,750 words you had to read, correct, evaluate and grade on evenings and weekends. That's if you were wise enough to give them only one assignment per week....If you gave each paper a bare five minutes you'd spend, on this one set of papers, fourteen hours and thirty-five minutes.

His lessons include a disastrous field trip to a questionable film where the students are boisterous and refuse to leave when the movie is over. Then there is "the art of the excuse note" where students get to create, read, and discuss excuse notes they write which are supposed to be from their parents. There is the lesson where everyone brings in a cookbook and reads or sings a recipe, often accompanied by another student and instrument. And, of course, there is his fallback lesson of his stories told in his wonderful Irish brogue.

Sprinkled into his reflective narrative are encounters with various personalities, from his wife to administrators, fellow teachers, parents, and some very challenging students. He needs to get the attention of each of these  people in different ways, but has only varying success,  blaming himself for not handling situations and encounters better. Like when he ate one student's sandwich in class. Or when he struck another in the face with a rolled up magazine. Or when he called a student's parents with a report of misbehavior and learned the father had severely beaten the student as punishment.

In all, he taught in five high schools and one college, including a vocational and technical high school and a high school of fashion industries.

My arithmetic tells me that about twelve thousand boys and girls, men and women, sat at desks and listened to me lecture, chant, encourage, rumble, sing, declaim, recite, preach, dry up. I think of the twelve thousand and wonder what I did for them. Then I think of what they did for me. 

Those of us who were at one time (brief for me) teachers can identify with many of the situations and students McCourt describes. But with his direct, honest writing style, McCourt relays this information about his world of education so clearly that probably anyone could feel his self-doubt and lack of expertise in handling the daily challenges that arise in Teacher Man. A strong, sensitive, and funny memoir.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Cordell, Esme Raji. Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year.   

The daily memories of a creative, off-beat novice teacher in an inner city school. Delightfully, passionately written with plenty of observations about her students, administration, and wonderful projects she gives to her students, including building and using a time machine in her class and having her students shout, "Play ball!" after the national anthem is piped in daily over the school intercom. Wonderful.  (previously reviewed here)

To Serve Them All My Days

 Delderfield, R.F.. To Serve Them All My Days. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1972. Print

First Sentences:

The guard at Exeter warned him he would have to change at Dulverton to pick up the westbound train to Bamfylde Bridge Halt, the nearest railhead to the school, but did not add that the wait between trains was an hour.

It was one of those trivial circumstances that played a part in the healing process of the years ahead, for the interval on that deserted platform, set down in a rural wilderness, and buttressed by heavily timbered hills where spring lay in ambush, gave Powlett-Jones an opportunity to focus his thoughts in a way he had been unable to do for months, since the moment he had emerged from the dugout and paused, rubbing sleep from his eyes, to glance left and right down thee trench.

Description:

When I began The First Sentence Reader blog, one of my first choices of books to make sure that every one of my reader knew about was R.F. Delderfield's To Serve Them All My Days. Now, three years and over 300 book recommendations later, I am finally getting around to telling you about this wonderful novel.

This book has everything I want in a great read: strong, personable characters; interesting setting; compelling plot; and honest, straightforward writing. It tells the story of David Powlett-Jones, a shell-shocked survivor of the World War I trenches in France. There he was severely shaken by a mortar blast and forced to recover in a hospital for months. P-J, at the urging of his doctor, applies to the English boys school, Bamfylde, under the able leadership of the Rev. Algy Herris. With no experience teaching but finding the clear air and quiet were immediately clearing the fog and lingering fears in his brain, the young Powlett-Jones takes a history teaching position at Herris' school and the story begins.

Here you could almost reach out an touch the quiet. It was a living thing that seemed to catch its breath up there in the hanging woods and then, at a wordless command, slip down the long hillside and gust over the rails to lose itself in the wood opposite. Its touch was gentle and healing, passing over his scar tissue like the fingers of a woman.

The Bamfyld staff has been pulled together helter-skelter due to the enlistment of every other able man into the English war effort. Aged, old-school teachers are coaxed from retirement to work alongside war dodgers and those rejected for physical or mental shortcomings. The school is filled with privileged boys ready to challenge any new teacher, so P-J, a former miner's son, knows he has his work cut out for him.

But under the headmaster's loose but purposeful guidance, P-J begins to blossom into a solid, popular teacher. Nicknamed "Pow-Wow" by the boys for his tendency to talk things over in class and listen to the opinions of the boys, he becomes a rarity in the age of memorization and the punishment cane.

The school and boys begin to grow on P-J and slowly the horrifying sights and tragedies from the French trenches begin to fall from his consciousness. Love enters his life, as does tragedy. He shows quick-thinking in classrooms, faculty lounges, and several emergency situations involving life and death for several boys.

In all, To Serve Them All My Days gets my highest recommendation. Don't be put off that it is a fairly long book. It will bring you to a place that is welcoming, challenging, intelligent, cozy and loving. You won't want to leave that environment or its characters which you have grown to admire and love. Please read it soon.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

McCourt, Frank Teacher Man.   

Memoirs of Pulitzer Prize-winner McCourt recalls his three decades of teaching English in New York cities inner-city schools. As an Irish immigrant facing thousands of not-so-eager "students", he faces real world challenges each day, many of which he fails to overcome. But when he succeeds with telling them stories of his life in Ireland or sees the flicker of a student's respect, he is inspired to keep teaching. Extremely personable and well-written.

The Fault in Our Stars

Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. New York: Crown 2012. Print.

First Sentences:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Description:

As a cancer combatant, I retain a fascination for cancer-themed books, both fiction and non-fiction. To me, it always seems interesting to read how an author/character depicts the thoughts and actions of someone experiencing the fears, hopes, and broken dreams that accompany cancer.

In John Green's The Fault in Our Stars I found three teenage characters living typical teenager lives while coping with various stages and types of cancer. Having met in a dull support group meeting, Augustus, Hazel, and Isaac bond over video games, jokes, conversation, loves, and one particular book, An Imperial Affliction  with it's esoteric philosophy about suffering that speaks to them. 

Normal kids, right? But each has challenges to address. Hazel uses a portable oxygen machine to keep her cancer-ruined lungs working; Gus has lost a leg to the disease; and Isaac has only one weak eye which will soon be removed due to cancer. But they persevere by testing out their new relationships with each other, family, and friends; embarking on adventures; and always seeking to somehow contact Peter Van Houten, the reclusive Dutch author of their favorite book.

For Hazel, the romantic attention of Gus is a first and she is cautious, but happy. For Isaac, Gus is a great supporter and fellow video-gamer, and for Gus ...well, who knows what the ex-basketball star gets out of these relationships besides fellowship with fellow cancer travelers.

But this description belies a truly great book. The dialogue is snappy and clever, the disdain they have for anyone who condescends to their illness is realistic, and the strong bonds they form make them seem like young people you wished you really could meet just so you could sit around and talk with them as ordinary people, not merely sick kids.

There it is: a simple story about complex, real characters who are living life of ordinary kids, but who happen to have a fatal disease that will take their lives someday. Hazel describes herself as a "grenade" who will destroy someone someday if she gets too close, But that does not stop her friends nor prevent them from seeking adventure and confidence as they interact with the non-sick world.

To me, it is an honest portrayal of what those of us who have experienced cancer go through and think about, both positive and negative. It's a rare book that combines personal reflections as well as physical actions of its characters on 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
AAbout The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Weir, Andy. Looking for Alaska  

Four friends at a private boarding school discuss life, scheme pranks to pull, consider their lives, and in general reveal what is occurring inside a teenager's head. Excellent (previously reviewed here)

HItchens, Christopher. Mortality  

The famous columnist Hitchens contracts cancer and records his progress in the journey to address the disease. His thoughts about entering the "country of the well" to the "land of malady" are clever, defiant, heart-breaking, and honest. (previously reviewed here) 

Looking for Alaska

Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York: Dutton 2005. Print.

First Sentences:

The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party

To say that I had low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically.

Description:

If you are seeking a travel book, don't bother with John Green's Looking for Alaska. Despite its title, this coming-of-age novel has nothing to do with the fiftieth state, but instead refers to a teenage female student named "Alaska" (she was allowed to choose her own name by her parents) and her small circle of friends at a private boarding school in Alabama.

Alaska Young is a free spirit, full of life, pranks, and off-beat thoughts. But she also has a darker side where she refuses to answer any questions beginning with "Who, What, Where, When, Why, or How." She drinks and smokes in secret too much, falls asleep at the drop of a hat, and can be outrageously insulting at times. But her fascinating curiosity and energy drives her and her friends to new heights in conversation and actions.

Her gang includes the book's narrator, Miles Hatter, nicknamed "Pudge" for his skinniness; Pudge's roommate Chip, nicknamed "the Colonel" for his intricately organized pranks and his memory of facts from the world almanac and dictionary; and Takumi, who has no nickname but is privately in love with Alaska. But then again, so is Pudge along with most other male students at Culver Creek school.

The foursome sits around discussing school, books, pranks, fellow students, and life. And that's about it. Maybe that sounds boring, but it's brilliantly written and realistically portrayed by all four characters, so it rolls along splendidly.

Chapters are curiously titled, one hundred twenty-eight days before, two days before, etc. and then, twenty-seven days after. Of course, that means there is a significant event half-way through the book that changes all their lives. What happens? Well, you will just have to read Green''s novel.

Looking for Alaska is a bit A Separate Peace, some The Catcher in the Rye, and part Brewster (one of my favorite schoolmates coming-of-age books). Green, the best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars and the new Turtles All the Way Down, captures the thoughts and worries of teenagers perfectly in the privacy of their dorm rooms, how they plan to attack life and those who oppose their sensibilities, and what activities are worthwhile to pursue.

If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.

It is a fine peek into the minds and lives of friends living through the challenges and joys of their teenage years. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Slouka, Mark. Brewster  

Four teens find each other and band together in friendship during their trouble high school years. Brilliant. (previously reviewed here)

Knowwles, John. A Separate Peace  

Two teenage boys, one outstandingly popular and athletic, the other introverted and scholarly, bond together in friendship at an exclusive boarding school after World War II....until a tragedy occurs under mysterious circumstances that affects both their lives. A classic.

Fifth Business

Davies, Robertson. Fifth Business. New York: Viking Penguin. 1970. Print.

First Sentences:

My lifelong involvement with Mrs. Dempster began at 5:58 o'clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.

I am able to date the occasion with complete certainty because that afternoon I had been sledding with my lifelong friend and enemy Percy Boyd Staunton, and we had quarreled, because his fine new Christmas sled would not go as fast as my old one.

Description:

Can one describe the excitement of stumbling upon a new author, a great book, and the promise of more titles because the original book is part in a trilogy? I can't, but will try to give you part of the enthusiasm I felt while reading Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, the first novel in his turn-of-the-century Deptford trilogy.

Set in the tiny town of Deptford, Canada, Fifth Business is a personal history told by Dunstan Ramsay, a history teacher in a private boy's school who is retiring after 45 years of service. After a weak tribute article about Ramsay's life appeared, he decides to write a letter to the headmaster to set the record straight on his life story. Fifth Business is the lengthy letter that results.

The plot and subsequent actions over his lifetime revolve around one incident when Ramsay dodged a snowball thrown by his much richer friend/enemy, Percy Boyd Staunton. The snowball, loaded with a stone, hit the pregnant wife of a local parson, causing her to fall, give premature birth to a son, Paul, and then go slowly, quietly insane.

Ramsay is assigned by his mother to look in on this addled woman and her tiny son every day over the next years, becoming friends with both. Mrs. Dempsey proves an interesting listener and kind companion, and Paul becomes an eager student for Ramsay to teach minor magic tricks to. All is well until Mrs. Dempsey participates in a scandalous act that shocks the small town and drives this group of friends apart.

When Ramsay leaves to serve in World War I, he provides an honest description of service for an ordinary soldier in a war:

I was in the infantry, and most of the time I did not know where I was or what I was doing except that I was obeying orders and trying not to be killed in any of the variety of horrible ways open to me.

I was bored as I have never been since - bored till every bone in my body was heavy with it....It was the boredom that comes of being cut off from everything that could make life sweet, or around curiosity, or enlarge the range of the senses. It was the boredom that comes of having to perform endless tasks that have no savour and acquire skills would gladly be without. 

In France, though my boredom was unabated, loneliness was replaced by fear. I was, in a mute, controlled, desperate fashion, frightened for the next three years.

He becomes a hero for one action that is performed during a frightening raid on a machine gun nest. His action results in the loss of his leg and part of an arm, damage that affects the choices his makes throughout the remainder of his story. Meanwhile, Staunton remains home in Canada, building up a fortune in the food industry. 

Upon Ramsay's return, he takes a teaching position at the boys' school he and Staunton attended, even becoming Headmaster during World War II while Staunton chairs their board of directors. Paul has meanwhile disappeared from Deptford, but Ramsay stumbles upon him in rural France performing a wonderful magic act for an otherwise broken-down circus.

It is the writing that pulls these seemingly connected, yet separate lives together. Author Davies captures the mind and phrasing perfectly of a history professor and researcher in the early 1900s, a man who seems open about his actions but holds many secrets. 

The story is full of unique characters, from magicians to fool/saints, soldiers to professors, lovers and hobos, and rural townspeople with their prejudices and beliefs. All are influences on Ramsay's life, both for good or evil. Ramsay himself, in the telling of his story, looks for causes of his current status and his own inner being.

One always learns one's mystery at the price of ones innocence.

I cannot recommend this highly enough for those like me not familiar with Robertson Davies. And personally I cannot wait to read the other two novels in the trilogy (The Manticore and World of Wonders). The characters are definitely people I want to follow further.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Davies, Robertson. World of Wonders

Just started reading this and it's a fantastic conclusion to the Fifth Business Deptford trilogy. Narrated by Magnus Eisengrim (Paul Dempster), we hear his story about how he became a magician as he talks with an eminent film director filming him for a Robert-Houdin project. Of course, Dunstan Ramsay is along to observe and record their discussions about magic, people, life struggles, and the Devil. Wonderfully written, great characters, and absorbing plot.

Gold, Glen David. Carter Beats the Devil

Based on the real life of Charles Carter, a magician who performed before President Warren Harding who died later that night under suspicious conditions. Fantastic details of the man and his magic. One of my favorite books of all time. (previously reviewed here)

To Serve Them All My Days

Delderfield, R.F.. To Serve Them All My Days. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1972. Print

First Sentences:

The guard at Exeter warned him he would have to change at Dulverton to pick up the westbound train to Bamfylde Bridge Halt, the nearest railhead to the school, but did not add that the wait between trains was an hour..

It was one of those trivial circumstances that played a part in the healing process of the years ahead, for the interval on that deserted platform, set down in a rural wilderness, and buttresses by heavily timbered hills where spring lay in ambush, gave Powlett-Jones an opportunity to focus his thoughts in a way he had been unable to do for months, since the moment he had emerged from the dugout and paused, rubbing sleep from his eyes, to glance left and right down the trench.

Description:

When I started The First Sentence Reader blog, it was to share books I love that might not be familiar to other readers. One book in particular, R.F. Delderfield's  To Serve Them All My Days, was one that I most wanted resurrect and recommend to anyone seeking a great book full of strong characters, enveloping plot, and of course, wonderful writing.

In its first pages we are introduced to Second Lieutenant David Powlett-Jones, a shell-shocked World War I survivor looking to start his life over as a teacher in Bamfylde, a quiet boys school in England. He is taken under the wing by the personable headmaster, Algernon Herries. Under Algy's friendship and encouragement, Powlett-Jones begins to settle in to Bamfylde and push his memories of the trenches of World War I behind him.

Powlett-Jones has never taught school before, much less in a prestigious boarding school of young privileged men. This is the tale of a man growing and maturing just as his young students grow and mature. PJ is initially assigned to teach modern history to the Lower Fourth, the dreaded fifteen-year-olds who are old hands at the school, yet far enough away from graduation that they felt no pressure to apply themselves to work or discipline. 

PJ survives their attempts to test his authority and the boys gradually become engrossed in his stories about life in the military. He is willing to explain to them the realities of the world and motivations of countries that brought about the current War. This conflict is close to the hearts of the boys as it continues to take the lives of Bamfyld graduates they knew and whose deaths are noted in a weekly ceremony. 

The rest of the teaching staff are slow to warm to Powlett-Jones as they are so far removed from his real world of military experience, but at the same time are his superiors for their years of teaching. From Howarth, the "dry old stick" English professor, to Carter, the gung-ho patriot who feels himself a military expert after six months as a Territorial officer, they seem an odd lot to Powlett-Jones in his new environment.

The chapters unfold with new adventures to challenge and delight the residents of this school. Year after year we watch Powlett-Jones face situations concerning the young boys, staff, and himself with the calm logic and reasonableness that define his character of strength and goodness. There are some great characters in literature and David Powlett-Jones can hold his own with any of them.

It is this interaction, this self-growth, and this atmosphere of learning, both academic and personal, that makes To Serve Them All My Days the masterpiece of writing it is. Powlett-Jones and all the other residents of Bamfyld are such wonderful characters, so full of honor, spirit, and love that one cannot help but be thoroughly involved in their lives in this small school. 

It is a rather long novel (625 pages), so the opening sentences may not be the grabbers of other books reviewed here. But these sentences perfectly reflect the languid, detailed style of the author. And "rather long" is not such a bad description for a novel. In my opinion, a great "rather long" book is one that, when you finish reading it, you are hoping for even more chapters that will allow you to spend more time in this world and its inhabitants (e.g. Gone With the Wind, War and Peace, The Lord of the Rings, and A Life of Barbara Stanwyck). 

To Serve Them All My Days can take its rightful place in this illustrious group. And when you do reach its final pages, I guarantee you will regret the closing of the door to this world of Bamfyld and wish there were at least a few more chapters to prolong your time with Powlett-Jones and his charges. To Serve Them All My Days leaves you wanting more. Is there any better evaluation for a book?

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Codell, Esme. Educating Esme

Diary of a first year teacher's experiences in inner city school. Unusual in her unique, quirky, compassionate methods to reach the children and help them as students and people, the book details her exhaustive efforts to overcome forgotten children and an admiration that does not support her new techniques. (previously reviewed here)

Herriott, James. All Creatures Great and Small

Similar coming of professional age of a newly graduated veterinarian in the rural Yorkshire Dales, learning as he goes of the people, the animals, and the land. Wonderfully written with humor and great relationships between the author, his boss, and the local farmers.

Educating Esme

Codell, Esme Raji. Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books. 1999. Print

First Sentences:

To: fifth-grade beginniners
From: Melanie, fifth-grader

I know what your thinking your thinking that going to the fifth grade is going to be fun and not hard well I got something to tell you. You got to know every thing. you have to know your devition your time tables know how to do the down down decimal sistem.

Description:

Wouldn't it have been great to have had a spectularly fun, innovative, and intelligent teacher during your elementary school years? Well, meet Esme Raji Cordell, (a.k.a "Madame Esme"), the author of the delightful autobiography and tales of teaching, Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year.

Just imagine entering the classroom of Madame Esme's (as she prefers to be called for its regal air) on the first day of the opening of a brand new school and her first day as a teacher of fifth grade inner city children. What do you see in her room?

• A school-shaped bulletin board declaring, "New School ... You're What Makes it Special" with apples on it that are matched to desks where you are to sit;
• A bulletin board detailing the five steps to "Solving Conflict";
• A King Kong figure on top of Empire State Building with "King Kong Says Reach for the Top!" with floors on the building labeled "Listen," "Think,' "Work Carefully," and "Check Your Work";
• The Spelling Center with games, typewriter, electronic pen, and sponge letters with paint;
• The Art Center with "bins of new, juicy markers, craft books and real art books with pictures of naked people";
• A 3D papier mache poster of five multiethinic kids' heads saying "Welcome to Cool School";
• A huge Time Machine (old refrigerator box) covered in aluminum foil and a red flashing police light on top, with "Danger," "Highly radioactive," and "No peeking, this means YOU!" written on it.

Who wouldn't want to go into that room? At the door, Madame Esme greets every child at the door with a "real chipper 'Good Morning,'" then collects their problems in a "Trouble Basket." Children mime tossing into the basket any worries from home or personal life so they can concentrate on school. It is so successful that students from other classrooms stop by to unload their own problems before trudging to their own classes.

Her opening words to her class?

"I gave them my speech about how mean I was and how I've taught football players and cowboys and dinosaurs and Martians, so a few fifth graders aren't too challenging, but I need the money, so I'd give it a shot."

Educating Esme chronicles Madame Esme's first year of teaching in a new school, from her successful projects and ideas to the continual opposition she faced from her principal for her perceived defiance to established rules (including being referred to as "Madame Esme" rather than "Ms. Codell").

She is a dynamo of ideas developed to reach children, establish their sense of self-worth and mutual respect for peers, and to learn about the wonders of the world of reading, art, and creativity. She is a teacher "carried away with the idea of infinite possibility." 

To excite them about boring subjects, she renames the Math work to "Puzzling," changes science to "Mad Scientist Time," and social studies to "Time Travel and World Exploring." To help her highly illiterate student learn to read, she has them create alphabet posters "for the kindergartners" that show each letter along with pictures and words the students have found using that letter.

She found that they sing along with the national anthem "with more gusto" as it is piped into classrooms each morning ever since she had them shout "Play ball" at the conclusion, something they did at the end of the first all-school assembly to the mortification of her principal. "[My] goal is not necessarily to succeed but to keep trying, to be the kind of person who has ideas and see them through."

She can be stubborn in her determination about what needs to be done. "Compromise is fine for people who aren't as right as me," she declares. When her principal tells her that her curriculum does not match state requirements, she argues that she can could just fabricate reports and pretend that what happens behind her closed classroom door is all according to the rules so she can continue to reach out to kids in her own way. 

Even with her efforts, the children don't blossom overnight into scholars. Many deal with extremely difficult home situations or dangers in their neighborhoods. But Esme is determined to always work for their betterment, and the book records many large and small successes for her children both academically and personally.  

Her book shows both the possibilities and the frustrations of an innovative teacher working within a challenging situation with little support for her ideas. For Madame Esme, everything is about the children and helping them become better, stronger, more curious, and understanding of others. Reading about her efforts is both wondrous and sad that the great teachers have to struggle so much for so little reward and recognition.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Codell, Esme Raji. How to Get Your Child to Love Reading 

Wonderful resources for books appropriate and exciting for new-born children to high schoolers, with plenty of tips for reading to children, involving them in creative activities, and finding books in their own areas of interest.