by Paula Danziger
is firmly planced in the1960s...but somehow, eternal.
The 1960s gives us the unconventional new teacher who dresses like a kid and cares about her students enough to make them think. The other teachers treat education as a nine-to-five job, but for her, it's a calling. I had nine-to-five teachers sometimes, especially in grade school. I don't know how they got into that mindset--whether they started out trying to care but were mired into conventionality by the system; or whether they started off seeing teaching as a decently well-paying job with no layoffs or night shift. Anyway, I hated them and didn't learn much from them.
Not many teachers are like that nowadays. Probably because teacher's salaries are so low, only people who really want to be teachers will stick with it.
The eternal theme of the book is the family dynamic--with a verbally abusive dad and a mother who won't stand up to him, Marcy has grown up so ashamed of her body that she refuses to change into a gym suit. You come to learn that she's exceptionally funny, smart and talented, but she knows none of these things about herself...she just thinks she's fat and dumb because that's what she hears every day. Her four-year-old brother gets the abuse too--can you imagine a grownup yelling at a four-year-old because he sucks his thumb and carries a teddy bear? How screwed-up is that kid going to be?
So, once again, I don't recommend it unless you're a pre-teen. But if I were a teacher, it's the kind of book I'd hand to a lot of my students.
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