September!  It doesn’t look like the usual September, that’s for sure.  While the scent of fresh apples and newly-sharpened pencils is in the air – for sure, that hasn’t changed – my kids will not be getting on the school bus this year.  There will be no huddling on tiny chairs at “Back to School Night,” no Halloween parades or holiday concerts, no crumpled art projects in little backpacks.  What there will be instead, for me, is a five-year-old “office mate” sitting next to me, interacting with his classmates on Google Classroom while I try to squeeze work into his math and language arts lessons (Peanut will be doing the same downstairs, at her little desk in the family room next to Steve).  September is a nostalgic month of the year for me every year, as I think back on my own school days.  This year, more than any other, I want to visit books about the way school used to look, and the way it may look again (in some cases).

First of all, when it comes to education, no one is more committed than Malala.  I Am Malala: The Girl who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban, by Malala Yousafzai, is a stunning memoir of a story that is widely known around the world.  Malala grew up in the Pakistani mountains, the daughter of a progressive father who valued girls’ education – and became a youth advocate for girls’ education herself.  One day, armed Taliban stormed onto a bus, demanded to know which one of the girls was Malala, and then shot her.  In her memoir, Malala – who just graduated from Oxford University – tells the story of her childhood, her horrifying ordeal, and her ultimate triumpg.  All because she wanted to go to school and learn – something that many children take for granted, but many others can only dream.

For something lighter, how about a murder mystery set at a boarding school?  Cat Among the Pigeons, by Agatha Christie, drops Hercule Poirot into the thick of a murder at a girls’ school.  There are missing gems, and tennis, and Poirot solves the crime (of course) in a decidedly squidgy way.  (If you’ve read the book, you’ll likely remember – somewhat uncomfortably – the clue that puts him onto the killer’s scent.)  Like many bookish children, I dreamed of going to boarding school.  Cat Among the Pigeons helped to cure me of that dream.  You’re welcome!

I usually try to profile only books that I’ve read in these posts.  But two that I haven’t – that I’m hoping to get to this month or next – are Mr Tibbits’s Catholic School and Terms and Conditions, both by Ysenda Maxtone Graham and published by Slightly Foxed.  (While I haven’t read these for myself – they’re on my shelf – I’ve heard good things and everything that Slightly Foxed has done has been a winner for me so far, so no reason to think these won’t be.)  Mr Tibbits profiles half a century in English history through the lens of one boys’ school, and Terms and Conditions focuses on the many changes that girls’ boarding schools experienced in the twentieth century, through about 1970.  I will report back!

What are your favorite school books?