Welcome to Lizard Motel: Children, Stories, and the Mystery of Making Things Up, A Memoir($39.00Value)

Description

Welcome to Lizard Motel is a completely original memoir about the place of stories in children's lives. It began when Barbara Feinberg noticed that her twelve-year-old son, Alex, who otherwise loved to read, hated reading many of the novels assigned to him in school. These stories of abandonment, kidnapping, abuse, and more-called "problem novels"-were standard fare in his middle school classroom. Alex and his friends hated to read these books. As one of them said, "They give me a headache in my stomach." So Feinberg set out to discover just what these kids were talking about. She started to read the books, steeping herself in novels like Chasing Redbird, Bridge to Terabithia, The Pigman, and more. She consulted librarians, children's literature experts, and others, trying to get a handle on why young-adult novels had become so dark and gloomy and, to her mind, contrived. What she found both troubled and surprised her. "In the middle of the 1960s," observed one children's literature expert, "political and social changes leaned hard on the crystal cage that had surrounded children's literature for ages. It cracked and the world flowed in." Welcome to Lizard Motel documents this dramatic change in the content of young-adult novels but does so in a uniquely touching memoir about one family's life with books, stories, and writing. Feinberg's examination of the problem novel opens her eyes to other issues that affect children today-such as how they learn to write, how much reality is too much for a young child's mind, and the role of the imagination in children's experience. Quirky, moving, serious, and witty, Welcome to Lizard Motel is one of the most surprising books about reading and writing to come along in years. Not only does it explore the world of children and stories, but it also asks us to look at how our children are growing up. Feinberg wonders if, as a society, we have lost touch with the organic unfolding of childhood, with that mysterious time when making things up helps deepen a child's understanding of the world. This memoir will reacquaint readers with the special nature of children's imaginations. This is a sweet memoir by the mother of a 12-year-old boy who began to wonder why her son didn't want to read what he was assigned for school. These were critically lauded books like Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia and Sharon Creech's Chasing Redbird . So, with some time off during the summer, she decided to read some of them and do some research into the current "philosophy" of children's books. Feinberg started with Terabithia and discovered that although it is beautifully written, the conclusion left her with a feeling of bleakness and despair. Then a children's librarian gave her a copy of Children's Literature in the Elementary School , which says that "Realistic fiction helps children enlarge their frames of reference while seeing the world from another perspective." At first, Feinberg spends a lot of time deconstructing this concept, but she soon digresses to subjects like the after-school program she runs called Story Shop, and her daughter's ear surgery. The digressions are entertaining, and are eventually connected to the theme of children's literature, but in a wordy and roundabout way. This is a very personal story, more exploration than analysis, and though it's a quick read, it leaves readers wanting more substance. –Marlyn K. Beebe, City of Long Beach Public Library, CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Fresh and wonderfully readable . . . perfect for parents eager to cultivate their kids' fantasy lives and foster a passion for literature.--Michelle Green, People "The implications of this small book are quite large. Parents will want to read it, as will writers, publishers and educators."-- Publishers Weekly , starred review "I loved this book. Feinberg is a brave woman to challenge every shibboleth of the schools of education."--Diane Ravitch, author of The Language Police " Welcome to Lizard Motel turns out to be more than a diatribe against the dark subject matter of YA problem novels . . . Only a reader as attuned to realism as Feinberg could have puzzled out so nuanced a defense of imagination in children's lives."--Laura Miller, New York Times Book Review "When we place the steady diet of 'problem' novels in the context of the hours children spend being electronically bombarded by graphic, unremitting trauma, Feinberg's concerns . . . become not just comprehensible, but urgent."--Susan Linn, Boston Globe From the Trade Paperback edition. Barbara Feinberg is the originator of Story Shop, a creative arts program for children ages three through fourteen. She has won awards for her writing, including a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Feinberg lives with her husband and two children in Westchester County, New York. This is her first book.