Garden State - When Peter read Catcher in the Rye for school last month, and I read it for the 20th or so time, it was as good as ever, but since it was for school for Peter, there was more to the story. There was thinking and analyzing Holden in a big way. Then there was even more, because Peter's amazing English Teacher had the class watch Garden State with Zach Braff. In this movie, the main character, Andrew Largeman, returns to his home state of New Jersey for his mother's funeral. Andrew has been away for nine years, (since the time his parents sent him to boarding school), and has come home to face his demons. Natalie Portman co-stars as a girl he meets in a waiting room. It has the feel of a reunion movie, as Zach catches up and spends time with the friends he left behind. Peter wrote a paper about Holden and Zach and how they were sent away from their families (society) for being and acting "different". Now he and his English teacher have ME thinking in a deeper way about Holden and Andrew.
Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman - A few weeks ago there was an obituary in the Trib for the woman who wrote Up the Down Staircase, a book I'd read a couple of times in my youth, as part of my love of books about troubled high schools (To Sir with Love, Blackboard Jungle, etc.). This modern version includes an Introduction by the author, written in 1991, (the book was originally published in 1964) wherein Bel Kaufman writes about her writing process, and how the themes in the book still resonate. It's amazing that in spite of all that has changed in American education, so much of it is still the same. The students still want to make a personal connection with their teachers whether they know it or not, and the teachers want to mold young people into confident adults. Simple, yet so complicated.
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