Welcome to Lizard Motel: Children, Stories, and the Mystery of Making Things Up, A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: I'm so glad someone's saying it.
Review: As a children's author myself, I'm delighted to find someone suggesting in a popular book what many of us children's authors have long realized: Problem novels are not written or published for children at all, but for educators and librarians, without whom most of those books would never survive.

I would add that a surprising number of librarians dislike and disapprove of fantasy, and would love to wean children from imaginative works. As such, they are well-meaning but misguided opponents of childhood development, which depends on fantasy and imagination for proper unfoldment. This is the prejudice that kept The Wizard of Oz out of public libraries for decades.

What's more, the "reality" of these problem novels is collectively far from realistic. Authors have actually been advised NOT to write novels about families with both a mother and a father. Only broken families allowed!

Before reading this book, I was not familiar with the writing programs of Lucy Calkins, but I can only say I'm glad I never found myself in their clutches, or I might never have become an author.


Rating:
Summary: At first, compelling.....then self indulgent equivocation
Review: Feinberg deserves praise for bringing forth the troubling emphasis that current curriculums intended for the adolescent age, have placed on the "problem novel". Yet she is not dogmatic enough in her important argument. Instead we are led off track in the 2nd half of the book on a self absorbed meandering with no clear cut themes... that ends up focusing on her daughter's need for several surgeries relating to ear infections. How did we get here?! To presume a connection between the 2 parts of this book, one would need to do as the subtitle suggests and truly "make things up". Nonetheless, the assertions in the 1rst half, as well as the footnotes, make those parts of the book quite a compelling read.

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Summary: An elegantly written, beautifully reasoned book
Review: Feinberg has written an extraordinary work that makes use of her literary and emotional gifts as well as her intellectual ones. The basic premise of this small, powerful book is that literature matters; stories that we read and stories we create have tremendous meaning, and the books we hand down to our children express our cultural and personal values. Feinberg sees fiction and metaphor as crucial to the healthy development of children through their pubescent years, and dislikes the current trend in the schools toward memoir writing and the reading of issue-oriented "problem novels." A superbly reasoned and elegant book.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing
Review: I read this book because I wanted to learn more about the books available to pre-teens and teens. Also, because I expected to learn something about how the genre of problem books came into being. I found Ms. Feinberg's book to be confusing. It was not a discussion of the problem novel. Rather it was one woman's wandering and confusing monologue on her life - current and past - and her vague unease with the books her 12 year old son was reading. It did not provide any true information on the issue, only her subjective view of it. Despite the fact that she is a writer and runs a "writer's workshop" for children, she apparently never bothered to confront the school regarding her concerns. Instead, she wrote a book. I gave up half way through.

Rating:
Summary: high praise for a compelling, beautifully written book
Review: I, too, expected a more scholarly review of middle school literature but was surprised by the refreshing personal view taken by Feinberg. As a parent of soon to be middle school age girls and someone in the midst of a career changing decision to become a teacher, I see that most "scholarly" writing on educational matters is also opinion, however couched in fact and statistics. This book is more honest in that the author doesn't pretend to be "an expert." This honesty - and the beautifully compelling story and writing -- far more successfully describe the reading experience of middle-schoolers. She describes her experiences with grace and humor and she allows her readers to be reflective with her.

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Summary: A lovely, unusual book
Review: This fascinating book addresses two issues close to my heart: reading AND writing by kids. Long before my children were assigned "problem novels" to read, they were asked to conform to the writing system Feinberg criticizes, to write non-fiction "memoirs" and rewrite and edit them, starting in first grade. This was the entire focus of their writing experience in elementary school, and it was engineered by adults from beginning to end. The emphasis was entirely on the PRODUCT and certainly not on a playful, imaginative process. The result is that my two wonderfully imaginative kids despise "writing", and are convinced they can't "do it." I wish they could have been nurtured in the author's Story Shop instead. As for the problem novels, which for my older son began in earnest in 7th grade, he soon came to identify English class with unbearably depressing reading assignments, with very little relief for years to come. Feinberg correctly recognizes that while some of the books are very well written, more variety in assignments is in order. I am thrilled that she has finally challenged the status quo in such a beautifully written book.

Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: This is a great book - witty, provocative, original, and quirky in the best way. I literally couldn't put it down. It's also going to draw a lot of ire (it already has) from many quarters. But as a parent, I whole-heartedly agree with Feinberg's observations about a range of educational issues. For anybody trying to raise literate, creative children, under constant assault from a culture which has lost the natural love of reading and writing, this book is a breath of fresh air.


Rating:
Summary: really awful diatribe on YA lit
Review: This is a very biased, rambling memoir of one mother who hates young adult literature. I would agree that there is an overabundance of problem novels for teens, but the novels she targets are generally really good books. To me it sounds like just another mother who wants to fight the schools on what books they choose. Glad she takes an interest for her own children's sake, but honestly, give the schools a break and let the kids read whatever they want to read.


Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: What's wrong with what our children are reading in school? Barbara Feinberg knows & now I do too! Her observations are dead on. Her passion is accentuated by a sense of humor that makes the reading a pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: Misleading Subtitle. A Disappointment All Around.
Review: While Feinberg makes good points about the seemingly high number of "problem books" in YA literature, and the need for giving the right child the right book at the right time, her argument continually circles back to what books she might have liked or needed when she was a child -- which is irrelevant. She's done her growing up already.

Yes, there are a lot of "problem" books these days. It's a trend, and one that will eventually give way to another trend. That new trend will have its censors as well. While I agree with Feinberg in her criticism of some highly-regarded (indeed, Newbery award-winning) books, her criticism rings hollow when one considers that her own book pulls the exact same sort of emotional-whammy trick as the YA books she's criticizing. I'm talking, of course, about how the focus of her book changes very abruptly, from YA literature and her children's storytelling class -- to her daughter's illness.

Feinberg's daughter's illness seems to have been the real impetus for writing a book. I think the book should have focused more on that, rather than having been packaged as a book about imagination and YA literature.

An unfocused, neurotic mishmash.