The June Challenge: Books That Bullied Me At School

One of the greatest joys of last month's stupidly titled challenge was revisiting Robert Cormier's young adult classic I Am The Cheese. Sixteen odd years (and about as many rereads) after having first been forced to study it in Year 9, it not only stands the test of time but actually gets better with age. Wish I could say the same for all the other crap they shoved down my throat at school. Insipid weepies, hokey dramas, parochial Australian claptrap... My skin crawls just thinking about them. But what if, and this is just a thought, what if I was wrong? Perhaps I never gave them a chance, caught up as I was in pointless teenage rebellion. I always knew better. The books I was reading at home were infinitely smarter, deeper, more enjoyable, (fill in your own hyperbolic exultation here) than their supposed 'classics'. Plus, everyone knows that there is no better way to ruin a good book than forcing a kid to overanalyse it.

Having hopefully descended from the lofty pretensions of my youth, I figure it's time to go back and read the books I studied in high school and judge them on their merits. Thus, the theme for June: Books That Bullied Me At School. Rather than review each book on its own, I will put them into vaguely thematic groups: The Tear Jerkers, The Plays, The Moral Sledgehammers and The Shrimps on the Barbie. This not only saves me from writing (and you from reading) too many stupid forced flippancies, but will also give me the chance to go back to some more general topics that have been playing on my mind of late.

Anyway, here's what they made kids read at Mt. Scopus Memorial College between the years of 1988 and 1993:

The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis
The Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
The House of Wings by Betsy Byars (if I can find a copy!)
Julius Caeser by William Shakespeare
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Let The Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred Taylor
Montana 1948 by Larry Watson
The Harp In The South by Ruth Park
My Brother Jack by George Johnston

Special thanks go to Elissa for suggesting the theme for this month. Guess it's time to pull out the old school blazer and get reading...