In those circumstance, then, I found it gratifying to focus much more on the inherent pleasures of literature and writing rather than straightforward skills-building.
Many of my students valued family cohesion almost to the exclusion of individual achievement, and it wasn’t appropriate for me to promote a model that encroached on that.
The culture was different - that’s all there was to it - and I found it problematic and unhelpful for me to maintain some of the assumptions I’d brought with me about any sort of optimal path through school or life. I quickly abandoned the expectation that homework would be completed or that a post-secondary institution ought to be a student’s natural progression. There is much magic to be found in Winterhouse: in the craft, in the characters, in the old hotel, and of course in the reading of it, too.īen with his wife and three children. And annagramists who can do them in their heads without pencil and paper have always seemed like magical people to me. Ben’s main character seems to have an unusual ability to anagram just about anything in her head. There’s also quite a lot of annagraming worked directly into the plot. Just easy enough for your kids to solve with a little effort. If you’ve ever tried solving word ladders, you’ll love the ones Ben throws at you. I think, also, you’ll love the word puzzles he’s tucked in here and there. He has definitely hit the sweet spot when it comes to writing for kids of a certain age. In a read-aloud context, you’ll discover what I loved about the book so much: Ben’s voice is just right. I also think it makes a terrific classroom read-aloud. I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading it just as much as I did. If you haven’t read Winterhouse, I urge you to pick up a copy. So I guess I lied: I do like MG books when they’re written by great writers who truly have a feel for this special time in the reading lives of children. And finally, the good-natured creepiness therein. Then, of course, there is the trip to Winterhouse. In the finest traditions of Roald Dahl and William Steig, Ben creates some odd characters indeed. The review is called “ Oddity, Odyssey, and the Comfortable Creepiness of Well-Crafted KidLit”. I wrote a brief review of Winterhouse: a quick look at Ben’s technique, specifically, the voice he crafted in the novel and how much it strikes me as the distinguishing characteristic of the best MG literature.
(I’m working through Jill Lepore’s These Truths, her extraordinary 929-page history of the United States, so it might be a while yet.) I loved Winterhouse and can’t wait to begin the second book in the series.
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