Chapter Ten: Welcome to Lizard Motel

This was neither children's/YA fiction nor was it fiction at all!  But I heartily enjoyed this memoir, which I felt was as much about motherhood as it was about an adult's perspective on children's literature.  Of course, given how concerned children's literature is with adult conceptions of childhood, it isn't surprising that author Barbara Feinberg's experiences as a mother ended up being so entwined with her views on children's literature.  I didn't agree with everything she wrote, nor all of her judgments on the specific books she critiqued.  (For example, she disliked Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, which admittedly I haven't bothered to reread probably since sixth grade, but which I remember liking very much between then and when I first read it, probably in third or fourth grade.)  However, it was truly refreshing to read a published account by another adult validating what I felt as a kid about most of what I had to read for school--it wasn't what I wanted to be reading, and it wasn't enjoyable to read.  (Like her, or rather her son, the books we both dislike are the sorts of books I read maybe in fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades--we didn't read much before that, or at least not as a class, and after that we were pretty much in the realm of (adult) classics.)  I don't know if someone not familiar with the books Feinberg focuses on (mostly written and taught from the 1970s onward) and not interested in children's literature would find this book interesting, but I definitely enjoyed reading it!