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

What a remarkable book, one with a fresh perspective toward the young adult novels that are assigned in middle school English classes. Barbara Feinberg's central question is, when and why did books for preteens get so grim? In an extended essay mixed with personal reflection, Feinberg examines the YA "problem novel," the books that more or less began with Paul Zindel's "The Pigman" and which some librarians call "Doom and Gloom" books. The "child" protagonists in these novels face abuse, abandonment, incest, trauma, loss, and lots of death, as if the child needs to suffer and someone needs to die to make the child grow up, accept reality, and be a resilient, self-reliant survivor. In the meantime, most adults in these books are useless for helping the kids to cope, and imagination and play are completely sacrificed, as the kids in these books are expected to grow out of such hindrances. As the founder of a long-running children's program in New York called Story Shop, Feinberg knows and talks to real children and gives them places for play and imagination. In the book she also writes extensively about her children, 12-year-old Alex (the victim of this dismal school summer reading) and Clair, age 7. This gal knows and loves kids, and her book is an impassioned defense of childhood from an adult who has worked through her own issues. I heard a sermon several years ago by the Rev. Mary Harrington, a Unitarian Universalist minister and mother at the time of similar-aged children to Feinberg's, talking about environmental education programs for young children. In standard environmental education programs, children were given the message that the world was going to hell in a handbasket and they needed to save it. Interestingly, these children did NOT grow up into environmentalist adults. Instead, they became environmentally apathetic adults. The children who became environmentalists as adults were taken into nature and allowed to enjoy it, look at bugs, take hikes, NOT scared to death and given adult responsibilities to shoulder. As Rev. Harrington pointed out, children can't even make their parents recycle, much less can they save the world, and it is our duty as adults to take those actions, not foist it onto vulnerable, helpless children. Feinberg makes a similar point about the spate of young adult problem novels currently on schools' required reading lists. By and large, 12-year-olds hate them when they are required to read and analyze them in school. These books -- the same books they could love if they found them on their own at age 15 -- are depressing and demoralizing. Who are they trying to teach with these fake "child" narrators, who have an adult perspective in the guise of a child? Is it the adult's "inner child," a wish to protect our lost child selves by giving our own "past" selves a context for the suffering of life, and also trying to toughen ourselves by toughening up the kids? If so, do the books they are required to read help th

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.

First and foremost, I want to say that this is a glorious piece of writing. It's incisive, witty, insightful, and almost uncannily moving in its portrayal of parenthood and childhood. So much of the buzz around this book has centered on the controversial issues it raises about children's literature and children's writing, that the simple fact of Feinberg's artistic mastery as a writer often gets overlooked. Needless to say, I loved this book, and have been recommending it to everyone I know. That being said, I must also add that Feinberg is exactly correct, in my opinion, in her courageous analysis of the "Young Adult" literary phenomenon, as well as in her critique of a strange brand of "writing education" which has been increasingly dominating classrooms. Her discussion of these issues is sure to stir a wasps-nest of controversy, because children's education is a huge ideological battleground, with many entrenched and well-financed interests. One of the most remarkable things about Feinberg's discussion of these issues is her fairness -- so rare in this age of fierce polemics. In her discussion of the young adult "problem novels", she shows great generosity toward some of the better works, and recognizes the real attachment that certain youngsters have to these books. At the same time, she demonstrates how most of these bleak, formulaic works are barely literature at all, but are instead a kind of modern issue-driven "social realism for kids"-forcing a strange adult agenda, with weird ideological overtones, on young readers. I look forward to other great works from this author.

well written easy to read and timely. Lizard motel also makes parents, I am one! stop and think. Just because a book has an award does not automticly make it a good or appropriate book for our children. Feinbergs story is especially importaint in this time where parents are not able to take enough interest in their childrens lives, to pay more attention.

I've never read a book like "Welcome to Lizard Motel." It is poetic and full of ideas, and at the same time a satisfying story. I was sad when it was over. I would like to read more from this author.