Lucy Frank’s THE HOMESCHOOL LIBERATION LEAGUE

This post reviews Lucy Frank, The Homeschool Liberation League (New York: Penguin, 2009).
Frank, author of seven young adult titles, here offers a delightful contribution to the growing genre of children’s literature with homeschooled characters. 

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Homeschooling in Children’s Lit

This post summarizes what I’ve learned about homeschooling in mainstream children’s literature, looking at some books I haven’t reviewed already to make a few points about the genre. 
I first got interested in depictions of homeschoolers in mainstream children’s literature when I came across David Almond’s excellent 1998 book Skellig.   

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Joan Aiken as homeschooler

This post briefly reviews Lizza Aiken, “Growing Up with Joan Aiken: A Daughter’s View” in Horn Book Magazine (May/June 2009): 253-258.
Joan Aiken (1924-2004!) was a major figure in 20th century children’s literature.  She wrote nearly 100 books, the most popular of which are probably the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series.  In this article her daughter Lizza describes Joan’s [...]

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Susan Juby on Homeschooled Adolescence

This post continues my exploration of recent children’s lit employing homeschooling themes with a review of the young adult fiction trilogy of Susan Juby, whose comedic heroine is Alice MacLeod, a sarcastic and disaffected teen who was homeschooled until age fifteen.  The books, with their American publication date, are as follows: 
Alice, I Think(HarperTempest, 2003)
Miss Smithers(2004)
Alice MacLeod, Realist [...]

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David Gilmour on Movies as Homeschool Curriculum

This post reviews David Gilmour’s The Film Club: A Memoir(New York: Twelve, 2008).
Gilmour, a Canadian novelist, movie critic, and media odd-jobber, here offers a memoir describing the experience of allowing his deadbeat 15 year-old son to drop out of school and live at his home rent-free on condition that father and son watch three movies [...]

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Gordon Korman and Charles Webb on Hippie Homeschoolers

This post is the second in a series noting recent works of literature or film that employ homeschooling as a plot device.  In this post I discuss popular children’s author Gordon Korman’s 2007 book Schooledand the 2007 book by Charles Webb, famous author of the ’60s classic The Graduate, titled Home School. 

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Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl and Homeschooling

As homeschooling has become increasingly common and familiar, we are seeing more and more works of popular fiction, movies, and so on with homeschooled characters.  This is especially true for children’s fiction.  In this post and many more to come I will discuss some of these cultural products, beginning here with Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl(Knopf, 2000) [...]

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