Backstage

 I have been hired to teach reading and writing to a student -- there is no ISEE, no SAT, attached. This sort of thing fills me with terror, because there is no built-in structure, no test date, no bubble sheet. I had a writing teacher in college who would enter class in a serene way, with chocolate-covered blueberries, and who would then just speak eloquently about Raymond Carver for ninety minutes. She did not have an advanced degree. She had bottomless depths of self-confidence; she was mesmerizing.

My current student, a fifth grader, is working on her own newspaper. She interviews residents of her town and publishes her findings. Since Mother's Day is approaching, she has chosen to interview a mother -- and her thought process is straightforward, unimpeachable. "I chose K, three doors down from me, because she has three kids. No one else has *three* kids. So K must be the most interesting mother."

My student and I ran through the standard soft-ball questions. "What inspires or frustrates you? What does your day look like? What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a mom?"

I suggested this one: "Why did you move to Maplewood?" But my student shot me down. "I know why. Her husband found a job here." (This clearly invited a juicier question: "How did you feel when forces outside your control seemed to *dump your ass* in Maplewood?" But I bit my tongue.)

We then switched to "Impossible Creatures," which is a diverting novel about griffins, unicorns, and poisonous magical water shrews. I thought about my writing teacher in college; one thing she liked about Raymond Carver was that he never explicitly said, "The narrator of 'Cathedral' is an asshole." Instead, he let you make inferences, by having the narrator make obnoxious jokes about his wife's dear friend, a blind man. "This guy, this blind guy...His being blind bothered me...."

Something similar happens in "Impossible Creatures"; Katherine Rundell's main character is brilliant, and Rundell makes you infer this by having the character ask laser-sharp, prosecutorial questions whenever he is in a tough situation.

I tried to "lead" my student to this observation -- but, mainly, she wanted to talk about the griffins.

And so we did. There is nothing wrong with a griffin -- if it grabs a kid's attention. Minor victories....