Odd titles

Ninth grade daughter brought me Peter L. Gould's Write Naked, and I loved it. Victor finds an old manual typewriter at a garage sale, hauls it to his uncle's cabin in the woods (on the handle bars of his bike, pretending that he is the Viet Cong, because that's how they moved equipment. And here I thought I was alone in pretending that I was biking across the French countryside as part of the Resistance when I have to bike in the rain!) and starts writing. He meets a home schooled girl who likes to write with fountain pen, and the two share their writing and a little bit more. The use of the lower case "i" was symbolic but annoying to read, and BOTH children have... hippie parents. *Sigh* One mother went to Woodstock, the other lived in a commune. They both apparently had their children when they were over 40. As much as I liked this one, I don't think I have an audience for it in the middle school.


Boxen:The Imaginary World of a Young C. S. Lewis is something that looks fascinating, but which I didn't read much of. It's impressive-- the writing of C.S. and Warnie Lewis when they were 9 and 11. Complete with drawings, and with the misspellings left it, this recreates a huge amount of writing that the two of them did to keep themselves busy when cooped up during bad weather. If all of my students wrote like this, the teachers would die of shock. It's incredibly detailed and imaginative, just what one would expect of such an author. Still, this is for collections who have a large amount of really die-hard Lewis fans. It's not as much for the casual reader.