School Stories Research Articles

Illustrating Racism: Challenging Canada’s Racial Amnesia with Comics

Illustrating Racism:Challenging Canada’s Racial Amnesia with Comics Sean Carleton Robertson, David Alexander, and Scott B. Henderson — Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story. Winnipeg: Highwater Press, 2011. Pp. 40. Wong, David H. T. — Escape to Gold Mountain: A Graphic History of the Chinese in North America. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2012. Pp. 220. Worton, Zach — The Klondike. Montréal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2011. Pp. 220. It has been ten years since Chester Brown challenged Canadian historians to think more carefully about comic books with the publication of Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography.1 Over the past decade, comics with historical content have become increasingly popular resources for people to learn about the past.2 Yet many historians remain uncertain about the value and legitimacy of the emerging field of historical comics. This hesitancy is understandable; many comics practitioners make interpretive choices that disrupt disciplinary practices, often blurring distinctions between fact and fiction as well as popular and professional history. Historical comics are also rarely the products of archival research and are not subject to a peer-review process. Yet, prominent scholars such as American historian Paul Buhle and Canadian education historians Michael Cromer and Penney Clark argue that there is great pedagogical potential in engaging with comics in the history classroom.3 Cromer and Clark suggest that comics are “multilayered” and encourage students to “marry print and visual representations in order to read in ways that are deeply meaningful, because the narrative is incomplete without both dimensions.” Moreover, they contend that the process of [End Page 509] reading comics, which requires readers to piece together the story through their own interpretation of the visual and textual material provided, has the potential to increase students’ “tolerance of ambiguity and appreciation for the nature of history as interpretation.”4 The scholarship of Buhle, Cromer, and Clark has sparked a much-needed academic conversation about the merits of comics as history. To add to this discussion, I offer a review of three recent Canadian history comics that make significant contributions to Canadian social history and warrant critical attention: David H. T. Wong’s Escape to Gold Mountain: A Graphic History of the Chinese in North America, Zach Worton’s The Klondike, and David Robertson’s and Scott Henderson’s Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story. Each of these works, like Brown’s Louis Riel, draws attention to Canada’s hidden histories of racism. Despite the fact that racism has deep roots in settler societies, it is commonly believed that racism did not, nor does not, exist in Canada. Sherene H. Razack calls this forgetting a racial “amnesia.”5 Although attitudes toward race are socially constructed, their material and historical consequences are not. “’Race’ is a mythical construct,” Constance Backhouse reminds us, “’Racism’ is not.” Escape to Gold Mountain, The Klondike, and Sugar Falls illustrate for readers how racial differences have been “pressed into service” to justify, rationalize, and reproduce asymmetrical social relations to the benefit of settlers.6 By examining Chinese immigration to North America, the dynamics of race relations during the Klondike gold rush, and one student’s experience in a Manitoba residential school, these historical comics demonstrate the effects of racist practices in Canada. Far from being silly or irrelevant, these historical comics contribute to Canada’s complex social history and can be used to challenge Canada’s racial amnesia. Comics, then, might be used by historians as another tool in an increasingly diverse toolkit. “A time of great and unspeakable hurt”: Escape to Gold Mountain David H.T. Wong’s Escape to Gold Mountain examines the migration of poor Chinese people to the United States and Canada in the mid-1800s and their struggles to create new lives for themselves and their families. While Wong’s story is fictional, the artist borrows from his family’s real-life experiences in “Gold Mountain”—a term many Chinese used to refer to North America during the nineteenth century gold rushes—for inspiration. The central focus of the comic book is on how different generations of Wongs (used to symbolize all Chinese immigrants) experienced racism and overcame its consequences. Though it is problematic to assume that the Wong’s family story can...

Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story by D. Robertson

Robertson, David. Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story. Illus. Scott Henderson. Winnipeg: Highwater Press, 2011. Print. Sugar Falls is not the first graphic novel written by Swampy Cree novelist, David Alexander Robertson. Together with illustrator Scott Henderson, Robertson created a four book graphic novel series called 7 Generations. Robertson has also written The Life of Helen Betty Osborne. Some earnings from the sales of Sugar Falls goes to the Helen Betty Osborne Memorial Foundation bursary program. Sugar Falls was inspired by the true story of Cross Lake First Nation Elder, Betty Ross. Daniel has been assigned a school project where he must get a personal account from a residential school survivor. His friend, April, connects Daniel with her grandmother, Kokum (Betsy). Betsy confesses to April and Daniel that she has never shared this part of her life with anyone before. She tells them her horrific story, dressed in her traditional clothing, surrounded by cultural items that bring her comfort and strength. Betsy shared that she had been deserted by her mother at the age of five. She was very fortunate to be taken in by a family who showed her love and kindness. Unfortunately, at the age of eight, the government forced Betsy to attend a residential school away from her family. Betsy’s adoptive father had taught her many lessons in the short time she was with her new family. One of these lessons helped Betsy to survive her experiences at the residential school. Her father had taken her to Sugar Falls where he tells her that strength in relationships with people, traditions, and Mother Earth will keep her strong. Betsy encountered many horrendous experiences at the residential school from the moment she was torn away from her family. The lesson that her father taught her enabled Betsy to endure the constant emotional, sexual and physical abuse from the staff at the residential school. Betsy used her determination and strength to survive her time away from her family and to later become a leader in her First Nation community. Robertson deals with this time in Canadian history in a straightforward manner. Residential Schools is a very sensitive topic that needs to be shared with the younger Canadian generations. However, based on the content that Robertson included in his direct approach of telling the story makes it a book that would be best suited for high school students (ages 15 and up). Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Heather Dunn Heather Dunn is the K-9 Teacher-Librarian and Grade 8 Math Teacher at Athena Consolidated School in Summerside, PEI.

Tracing My Research on Parent Engagement: Working to Interrupt the Story of School as Protectorate

In this article, the author makes visible and works to interrupt the story of school as “protectorate.” In examining, within this dominant narrative, educators' taken-for-granted assumptions about parents' positioning in relation to the landscape of school, the author presents research on parent engagement that provides those within the field of education with a new plotline to replace the protectorate plotline. The author uses the term parent engagement consciously to differentiate it from such notions as parent involvement or parent partnerships that also populate the literature pertaining to educators' relationships with parents and family members of the children they school. In exploring taken-for-granted assumptions, the author defines what parent engagement is, analyzes how notions of parent engagement have been enlarged and expanded over the past decade and a half, and explores how a “curriculum of parents” in teacher education—at preservice, in-service, and graduate levels—could redefine what it means to be a professional by conceptualizing it as being in relationship with and working alongside parents and families.

Beyond State Planned School-Based Curriculum Development: One Chinese School's Story

View through a power perspective, this article critically evaluates tensions involved in China's school-based curriculum development (SBCD) in middle schools: the state's concern about control, accountability, and schools’ eagerness to struggle for more decision-making power. This article examines how a Chinese school and its teachers go beyond state-planned SBCD through analysis of power relationships in three stages of SBCD: goal setting, content and pedagogy selection, and implementation. It finds that the school and teachers negotiated with the governments and empowered themselves to gain more influence by taking the lead in collaborations with external groups, making major SBCD decisions, and distributing power democratically among school staff. The main purpose of the article is to highlight the complexity of the power redistribution in SBCD and to draw attention to the need for improved understandings of school power in Chinese context.

Mrs. Goodfellow: the story of America's first cooking school

Mrs. Goodfellow: the story of America's first cooking school

Do school libraries make a difference?

PurposeThis paper aims to introduce a research project investigating school library impact across the four home nations of the UK. The research aims to identify whether there are key contributions afforded by a school library or learning resource centre and by a school librarian, and if so, to offer case models and approaches which may be used to inform strategy and practice. The paper also aims to discuss the pilot phase of the research and explore the nature of impact assessment for school libraries adopted in American studies and UK literacy research, weighing their advantages and drawbacks. Consequent on this, it seeks to define a mixed‐method approach for this study, combining multiple surveys and more detailed interviewing and focus group research within a selected and balanced sample of schools across the four home nations, and a correlation with school performance ranking.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey has been developed for circulation to secondary school students in all four of the UK home nations, mapping their perceptions and expectations of the place of the LRC and of the librarian within their school experience. Secondary schools in all four home nations were ranked according to Ofsted evaluation and league table performance. A sample of schools was selected from each nation and interviews are currently being conducted with management, teaching staff, librarians and with focus groups of school pupils. This is complemented by a survey of a sample of higher education students in different disciplines to identify their view of the contribution of the school library to preparedness for university study.FindingsFindings from the pilot phase of the research tend to support the hypothesis that a correlation may be traced between good library provision and positive pupil engagement with reading and information skills. Should the full research project discover positive stories in schools without an active library or librarian, this will complement the identification of critical success factors, towards informing possible library advocacy action and policy approaches. A key issue identified from the pilot phase for impact research in schools is that pupils and teachers both have considerable difficulty in articulating how they experience the differences that libraries and librarians contribute. A case bank of good practice material collected is being developed at University College London.Research limitations/implicationsFor maximum validity, the in‐depth sample schools should include examples with and without a LRC and/or a school librarian, and both high and low performing schools. It is anticipated that the final profile may under‐represent schools without a LRC and/or school librarian, where it has been found harder to engage cooperation from head teachers in participation in this study. Ideally, evidence of impact would require close mapping, at the individual pupil level, of performance and engagement with the library; this research does not include such mapping at a systematic level across all the sample schools.Originality/valueThis research contributes to a key recommendation emerging from the work of the School Library Commission, by filling a gap in impact research on British secondary school libraries.

Preservice Teachers' School Stories and How They Matter

In this article, the author presents an analysis of 23 school stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 1996) composed by preservice teachers as part of an elective course in an undergraduate teacher preparation program. Three layers of analysis—topical, thematic, and theoretical coding—provide insight into the contribution of the school story genre towards understanding the personal practical knowledge (Clandinin, 1992) of preservice teachers. This research suggests that school stories offer generative potential for preservice teachers to make connections between their own schooling experiences and future practices. This study also recommends that teacher educators be mindful of preservice teachers' residual conflict with school personnel, systems, rules, and procedures. Strategies and practices to address these findings are included.

Reminders of Rugby in the Halls of Hogwarts: The Insidious Influence of the School Story Genre on the Works of J. K. Rowling

The Harry Potter novels clearly contain elements from the school story tradition, yet there has been a tendency to view the fantasy series as a revision, rather than a continuation, of the genre. Considering the similarities between Tom Brown’s Schooldays and J.K. Rowling’s work reveals how the elitist traditions of the genre are perpetuated through a phenomenally popular series which, on the surface, appears to champion equality and diversity. Transcending both generational and geographical boundaries, Rowling’s books hold mass appeal, yet they simultaneously propagate elitist notions of class, gender, and masculine heroism that are integral to the school story tradition.

Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Ante-bellum America by Hilary J. Moss (review)

Reviewed by: Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Ante-bellum America by Hilary J. Moss Beth Barton Schweiger Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Ante-bellum America. By Hilary J. Moss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2009. A half century ago, Bernard Bailyn exhaled a long sigh of frustration over the history of education in Education in the Forming of American Society (1960). The story of schools, he wrote, had been told as if they were “self-contained entities” completely disconnected from other developments in American history. Schools were explained as democratic and progressive institutions, leaving scholars with virtually “no historical leverage on the problems of American education.” With this book, Bailyn, along with Lawrence Cremin, opened a riotous debate about the origins and results of public education in the 1960s and 1970s. A cadre of revisionists such as Michael Katz challenged the orthodoxy that school reform was democratic, progressive, and promoted social mobility. Their critics defended the idealism of reformers such as Horace Mann. Sadly, the energy and creativity of this debate failed to connect the history of schooling with the mainstream of American historiography as Bailyn had hoped. To this day, beyond the small group of scholars devoted to the history of education, remarkably little is known about schooling in early American society, especially beyond New England, which for many historians has meant Massachusetts. Hilary J. Moss’s Schooling Citizens follows in the tradition of Bailyn and others who have argued that the history of education belongs at the heart of American history. Moss’s larger interest in race and citizenship in the early Republic led her to examine schools in three very different cities—New Haven, Baltimore, and Boston. [End Page 168] Like earlier scholars, she finds the case study is best-suited to the history of education, and like them, she defines “education” primarily as “schooling.” Schooling in the nineteenth century, as today, was an intensely local matter, with local conditions and context making all the difference. Moss argues that the early Republic was “a critical moment when many of Americans’ most deeply held ideas about public education took root” (5). Why, she asks, did public schools and opposition to educating free black Americans expand simultaneously in the early nineteenth century? She explains this apparent paradox by arguing that, contrary to the enduring and heroic myth, “the promise of public schooling for all was a fiction from the start” (193). Her study thus confirms what scholars of education have long argued. Moss holds out the intriguing possibility that “white opposition to African American education was never a foregone conclusion” (10). In the eighteenth century, she shows, black education was far less controversial than it was by 1830. So why did this change? Her answer is that by the mid-antebellum period, education was primarily intended to create citizens. In this new context, educating free black people became dangerous to white majority. The pattern has been repeated many times in American history. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, the “prejudice which repels the Negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated” (59). Through her careful study of three communities, Moss puts some historically specific flesh on white racism in the early U.S. Deep anxiety about notions of citizenship lay at the heart of the violent disputes about public schooling. White reformers never intended common schools to spread social equality. Instead, their vision of “universal” education was limited to citizens, and because black children were excluded from citizenship, they had little need for education. Against this narrow vision and fully comprehending its political significance, African American leaders energetically pursued access to public schools. Moss’s most important contribution is to study black education in the slave city of Baltimore, relying on a careful reading of apprenticeship contracts, advertisements, and census records. Her findings confirm what historians have long argued—that the presence of slavery in the upper South sometimes afforded free black people there more (albeit sharply qualified) freedoms than free blacks enjoyed in free states. Unlike the white residents of New Haven and Boston, white Baltimoreans seemed relatively unconcerned about black academies because slavery guaranteed the continued subordination of...

‘You are a Flaw in the Pattern’: Difference, Autonomy and Bullying in YA Fiction

Though portrayals of bullying in children’s books stretch back to Victorian public school stories, this article sees a new subgenre about bullying in young adult novels emerging in the post-Columbine years. Selected works by Jerry Spinelli, Walter Dean Myers, Jaime Adoff, Carol Plum-Ucci and Rita Williams-Garcia are examined, although the article begins by looking at a precursor of this subgenre, Robert Cormier’s classic The Chocolate War. In this subgenre, it is argued that bullying is not presented as dysfunctional adolescent behavior, but as a tool for addressing issues of difference and discrimination on the grounds of race, class, sexual orientation or personality; issues that filter into adolescent culture. High schools are thus portrayed as totalitarian microcosms where bullying functions as a means of social control, curbing deviance from masculine, heterosexual, middle-class and white norms. The narrative techniques and themes of these books—around homophobia, jock culture, rampage shootings and girl-on–girl violence—will be examined.

Juvenile Literature and British Society, 1850–1950: The Age of Adolescence (review)

Reviewed by: Juvenile Literature and British Society, 1850–1950: The Age of Adolescence Gabrielle Owen (bio) Juvenile Literature and British Society, 1850–1950: The Age of Adolescence. By Charles Ferrall and Anna Jackson. New York: Routledge, 2010. Juvenile Literature and British Society is a detailed survey of popular literature [End Page 348] published for young people in Britain over one hundred years. Ferrall and Jackson’s book boldly argues that British society from 1850 to 1950 might be called “the age of adolescence,” because during this period adolescence was understood as a time of adventure and romantic idealism rather than the time of “storm and stress” usually attributed to the late nineteenth century and G. Stanley Hall. One problem with this cultural claim is that it is based entirely on Ferrall and Jackson’s reading of juvenile literature from this period. One has to wonder whether the romantic idealism found in juvenile fiction might more accurately be said to represent what writers and publishers hoped for young people or perhaps expected young readers to enjoy, rather than a reflection of historical phenomena or widespread understandings of youth. While certainly ideas about youth can be found in fiction, the relationship between fictional works and the culture in which they are produced is perhaps much more complex than this argument allows. However, Ferrall and Jackson’s book makes a unique contribution to the field of children’s literature in its observation that much of the juvenile fiction published over this time span contains very positive depictions of young people, a fact that has been overlooked by scholars searching for historical representations of the negative, turbulent developmental stage we find depicted in some of today’s popular psychology. The book is thematically organized, divided into six chapters in addition to the introduction and a short conclusion. Chapter 1 deals with themes of sexuality and sacrifice in boy’s fiction before the First World War, arguing that these books represent boys “as sexually mature in a quite ordinary and by no means alarming fashion” (22). While the chapter does discuss cultural anxieties about sexual vice—mainly masturbation and same-sex affections—even offering strongly homoerotic passages from Tom Brown’s School Days, it emphasizes the ideals of sacrifice and devotion to nation and empire in school stories and adventure novels. “The adolescent,” Ferrall and Jackson write, “was a less complicated and certainly less troubled figure than he would become” (38). Historical claims like this one crop up frequently in Juvenile Literature and British Society, equating fictional depictions with perceptions of social reality. Chapter 2 is framed loosely around notions of romance in boys’ stories from the same period, arguing that this literature reconciled “rebellion with authority and individual desire with social convention” (41). This chapter describes a range of novels, though the connections between the array of authors and texts are not always made clear. The third and fourth chapters cover themes of sexuality, romance, sacrifice, and independence in prewar girls’ stories. These chapters entertain a complexity of argument that seems to be missing from the first two, and they situate juvenile fiction within both a broader literary history and the field of literary and feminist criticism. Chapter 4, in particular, complicates “the angel in the house” and “the New Woman” as they are conceived of in Victorian literary [End Page 349] criticism, arguing that these notions “have come to represent much more singular concepts of femininity than they represented when they were first used in the nineteenth century” (114; emphasis in original). Likewise, Ferrall and Jackson’s readings of girls’ stories reveal that themes of sacrifice and independence are frequently linked together: for example, a girl’s refusal of her first marriage proposal is depicted as itself a sacrifice, as well as requiring additional sacrifice if she is to support herself and her dependent siblings or parents. Reading girls’ stories in relation to existing genres of boys’ stories makes clear their common emphasis on principled, romantic idealism as the distinguishing characteristic of youth. The final two chapters deal, respectively, with boys’ and girls’ stories from the period between the world wars. While the contemporary literary works of Hemingway and Pound adopt a modernist...

“Hell’s view”: Van de Ruit’s Spud – changing the boys’ school story tradition?

The article identifies salient features of Van de Ruit’s novels “Spud: a wickedly funny novel” (2005) and “Spud – the madness continues” (2007) and compares them with the corresponding motifs commonly found in historical British boys’ school stories, tracing shifts in discourse to establish the novels’ construction of a South African boyhood. The article argues that through his conscious subversion of the imperial model’s defining discourses, Van de Ruit’s fictional representation of Spud’s school experience portrays the previously accepted “ideal” construction of boyhood, with its unmistakably defined principles and uncontested ethical code, as fundamentally challenged by the variety of alternative discourses to which the modern protagonist is exposed. The resultant construction of Spud’s South African boyhood is, therefore, characterised by the protagonist’s constant struggle to assimilate the frequently incongruous and bewildering discourses (about moral courage and personal integrity, in particular) that compete for his attention. The pivotal component of this particular construction of boyhood may be argued not to be a strict adherence to a clearly defined schoolboy ethic, but as a variable that is ultimately dependent on the boy’s choices.

A school in trouble: a personal story of Central Falls High School

A school in trouble: a personal story of Central Falls High School

A Day of Silence, a Day of Truth, and a Lawsuit

This case study focuses on issues of freedom of speech and freedom of religion in public schools. It involves a rural, southern high school where a group of students participated in a Day of Silence. The school allowed the students to participate based on the principal’s understanding of the students’ First Amendment rights. However, the next day, the principal prohibited a student from participating in a Day of Truth. She believed that student participation in a Day of Truth could be viewed as the school’s endorsement of religion and violates the doctrine of separation of church and state. The principal’s decision had far reaching consequences in this religiously conservative community, including a lawsuit against the school district. This case study provides an opportunity for both practicing and aspiring school leaders to explore a number of administrative, legal, and ethical dilemmas utilizing a framework grounded in the principles of social justice, equity, and diversity. Students can reflect on and engage with both legal and social justice issues through reading and discussing this case. Hopefully, this case study will lead to a discussion of queer issues using an authentic school story.

Through the lens: accessing children's voices in New Zealand on well‐being

This article illustrates the story of a primary school in South Auckland, New Zealand, considering the state of well‐being of its pupils. Situated in a deprived area with many people living in poverty, parts of the community caught in inter‐gang rivalry, some children consider the school environment to be a safer place to be. Elements of the early years New Zealand curriculum, Te Whaariki, the primary school curriculum and the school ethos, as well as policy and legislation are considered as supporting frameworks to the educational environment of the school. Inclusion is high on the school's agenda with the intention that all students are valued and treated equally within the diverse community in which they live. Undertaking visual methodology combined with participative action research, this study provides a window on children's own perspectives of their well‐being. Existing adult perspectives on well‐being have plethoric meanings attached; however, this article seeks the views of children themselves. In a school of predominantly Māori children, children from a range of ethnic backgrounds aged 8–10 years took part in a series of workshops to explore their feelings surrounding their school experiences. The children were given cameras to photograph what they perceive to be as important and significant in their school lives. The children's photographs and narratives provide a rich understanding of their opinions. A further element of the research is that the children involved also developed greater self‐confidence through the empowering experience of the photo‐narrative work that they took part in. Some of their stories are explained and illustrated with their photographs in this two‐fold outcome. Despite the turbulent community in which they live, the strong Māori values of whānau (extended family and friends) is apparent in the children's work; the importance of place (the school) and creativity are further themes that emerge as important aspects of school life linking strongly to the cultural heritage of the area.

Juvenile literature and British society, 1850-1950: the age of adolescence

In this study, Charles Ferrall and Anna Jackson argue that the Victorians created a concept of adolescence that lasted into the twentieth century and yet is strikingly at odds with post-Second World War notions of adolescence as a period of storm and stress. In the enormously popular juvenile literature of the period, primarily boys’ and girls’ own adventure and school stories, adolescence is acknowledged as a time of sexual awareness and yet also of a romantic idealism that is lost with marriage, a time when boys and girls acquire adult duties and responsibilities and yet have not had to assume the roles of breadwinner or household manager. The book reveals a concept of adolescence as significant as the Romantic cult of childhood that preceded it, which will be of interest to scholars of both children’s literature and Victorian culture.

The Cambridge companion to children's literature

Preface M. O. Grenby and Andrea Immel Chronology Eric J. Johnson Part I. Contexts and Genres: 1. The origins of children's literature M. O. Grenby 2. Children's books and the constructions of childhood Andrea Immel 3. The making of children's books Brian Alderson 4. Picture book worlds and ways of seeing Katie Trumpener 5. The fear of poetry Richard Flynn 6. Retelling stories across time and cultures John Stephens 7. Classics and canons Deborah Stevenson Part II. Audiences: 8. Learning to be literate Lissa Paul 9. Gender roles in children's fiction Judy Simons 10. Children's texts and the grown-up reader U. C. Knoepfelmacher 11. Ideas of difference in children's literature Lynne Vallone Part III. Forms and Themes: 12. Changing families in children's fiction Kimberley Reynolds 13. Traditions of the school story Mavis Reimer 14. Fantasy's alternative geography for children Andrea Immel, U. C. Knoepfelmacher and Julia Briggs 15. Animal and object stories David Rudd 16. Humour and the body in children's literature Roderick McGillis Guide to further reading Index.

Narrative Understandings of Lives Lived in and out of Schools

Drawing on a narrative inquiry into the experiences of 19 youth who left school without graduating, I raise questions about stories of school, the institutional narrative of schooling. Through inquiring into the youths’ stories, we identified six resonant threads that spoke to the complexities of their lives. Their lives awakened us to what might be possible if we engaged with their stories as a way to open up or disrupt current stories of schools to allow for the reimagining of schools. Through attending to youths’ stories we might make the experience of youth, in their life contexts, the starting point not only for education but also for schooling.

The education of a British-protected child: essays

pieces here span reflections on personal and collective identity, on home and family, on literature, language and politics, and on Achebe's lifelong attempt to reclaim the definition of 'Africa' for its own authorship. For the first thirty years of his life, before Nigeria's independence in 1960, Achebe was officially defined as a 'British Protected Person'. In The Education of a British-Protected Child he gives us a vivid, ironic and delicately nuanced portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its 'middle ground', interrogating both his happy memories of reading English adventure stories in secondary school and also the harsher truths of colonial rule.

Boys, Girls, and Other Hazardous Materials (review)

Reviewed by: Boys, Girls, and Other Hazardous Materials Karen Coats Wiseman, Rosalind. Boys, Girls, and Other Hazardous Materials. Putnam, 2010 [288p]. ISBN 978-0-399-24796-5 $17.99 R Gr. 7-10 Middle school was tough for Charlie Healey—her two best friends turned out to be treacherous frenemies—so she decided it was time for a clean break. Now entering ninth grade at a different school, she finds new friends in Michael and Sydney, and a few old ones: a guy named Will, who was her best friend from the time they were tots until he moved three years ago, and a girl, Nidhi, who was another victim of Charlie's frenemies' middle-school meanness—while Charlie was still part of their pack. She quickly makes up with Nidhi, and the entire group of friends navigates the ups and downs of freshman year in a school where competition is intense. The lacrosse team is especially vicious, and when the hazing of freshmen presumptuous enough to try out for varsity turns dangerous, the friendship between Charlie and Will reaches a crisis. In her first foray into fiction, Wiseman (the author of Queen Bees & Wannabes, on which the movie Mean Girls was based) succeeds in delivering realistic, likable characters whose challenges and mistakes are all too relatable. The ensemble cast is multicultural in a natural, unforced way, and simple things like gesture and casual touch are portrayed with easy grace. There is a plausibility flaw in the resolution as the fate of an important character is left without mention, but that omission isn't enough to mar the sense of a solidly realized, compellingly readable contemporary school story. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois