LitPicks - October '09

Those Who Teach...Must: For some, teaching is in the DNA, a passion—a need, really, to offer young minds a glimpse of a wider world and the first rumblings of self-knowledge. Our books this month revolve around three unusual and ne're-to-be-forgotten teachers.

A Lighter Touch | Wonderfully Written | Great Works   



Ms. Hempel Chronicles
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 2008
208 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Poor Ms. Hempel. She thinks she's not a very good teacher...and she doesn't think she even likes her job. But the tip-off is that she loves her students. In fact, she thinks they're things of beauty, deep-down inside. And it's to her credit that she manages to coax that beauty, as well as their sheer originality out from under their protective middle-school shells.

Just listen to her as she tells parents during an open house why she assigns the eighth graders Catcher in the Rye:

[E]very time I teach Catcher...it's like they've stuck their finger in a socket and all their hair is standing on end. They're completely electrified. What they're responding to, I think is the immediacy and authenticity of the narrator's voice. And part of what makes Holden sound authentic to them is the language he uses. This book...suddenly opens up to them all of literature's possibilities. Its power to speak to their experience.

Maybe she is lazy, preferring pop quizzes to essays (easier to grade in front of tv), but Ms. Hempel reaches her students. She has an uncanny ability to get through to them because she recognizes and honors them as people.

This slender little novel is a collection of loosely linked episodes and flashbacks into Ms. Hempel's childhood and young adulthood. For my money, the best part of the book is in the classroom and around the school. Author Bynum writes with a witty knowingness—her prose is smart, funny and wise. A delightful book.

Check out our Reading Guide for Ms. Hempel Chronicles.


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Mister Pip
Lloyd Jones
000 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Pop Eye is the village freak show. He sports a clown's nose and pulls his large, regal wife around with a rope tied to the end of a wooden trolly. Such a sight.

Civil war has erupted on this unnamed South Pacific Island. And when the entire white popularion flees to avoid bloodshed, the island is left without teachers. So village leaders turn to the single white man left who would have the background to educate their children—Pop Eye.

When the children find this strange man standing in front of them—in a white linen suit, no clown nose, and calling himself Mr. Watts—they're stunned and curious. "I am no teacher,” he tells them, “but I will do my best. That's my promise to you children. I believe, with your parents' help, we can make a difference to our lives." Teacher or not, it turns out that Mr. Watts has a natural gift and humility for imparting infomation.

Parents are invited into the classroom in to share their stock of village lore—everything from how to kill an octopus to the importance of the color blue. But the best part of every day is Mr. Watts's reading from Dickens's Great Expectations. Dickens's book, about young Pip's struggle to attain maturity and self-knowledge, entrances the children—despite the book's setting in a distant time and land. Gradually, they begin to see parallels in their own lives.

Author Lloyd has chosen the voice of a 13-year old island girl, now mature, to tell his story. Inevitably, the civil war reaches the little village, bringing with it the horror and tragedy that all war does. Matilda, our narrator, bears witness to unspeakable brutality. But keeping Dickens's characters in mind, she finds her way to safety. Years later she will unwrap, at least partly, the mystery that is Mr. Watts.

The book is both tragic and glorious. Matilda, the villagers, and Mr. Watts are as engaging a fictional ensemble as any you will ever come across.

See our Reading Group Guide for Mr. Pip.

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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark, 1961
127 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
While I'm not sure this is truly one of literature's "great works," it has none-theless endured for 50 years, inspiring stage and film productions along the way. The reason lies in its heroine, Miss Jean Brodie, who intrigues, infuriates and always captivates readers.

Miss Brodie is a born teacher. She refuses to follow prescribed curricula, preferring instead to enliven her lessons with stories and class trips. She believes education is not stuffing minds with facts but drawing out what's already in them, enlarging and polishing children's innate curiosity and imagination.

The book is funny. We're never inside Miss Brodie's mind but know her only as she's viewed by her 10- and 11-year-old students, which leads to some very funny observations. The girls' perspectives on the grown-up world are hilarious, especially their budding curiosity and fixation on sex.

Despite its humor, the seriousness of Spark's novel is always felt. Miss Brodie is strange, even troubling, as she singles out six of her girl students whom she feels have special talents. Under her tutelage the girls, known as "the Brodie set," are to become the "creme de la creme"—superior beings. Yet her ideals of superiority eventually lead her on a path toward Mussolini and Hitler, leaders she openly admires.

I think book clubs would have terrific discussions surrounding Miss Brodie's true intentions. Whose best interests is she mindful of—the girls or her own? Is she simply silly, as a one of her girls later believes, or is her power over them of a more pernicious nature? She is betrayed by one of her own—we are told this early on— and the story works its way to discover who did so and why. Great meat to chew on.

See our Readers Guide for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

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