The Homeschool Liberation League Book

Lifesucking. I can't think of another way to describe this book that makes you want to sing "Born Free" and cause you to think of all the great quotes from Einstein and Churchill and Twain on true education and you marvel at the life of a teenage girl making real decisions and having real questions about life and finding real anwers from people she has networked by herself and then it sucks it all back and leaves you with the charred remains. This did a good job introducing those who haven't experienced homeschooling to what it could be, both the sit-down drill-sergeant parent-cum-teacher approach (in her life and in the life of her new, musical genius, home-schooled boyfriend) and the child asking questions of life (unschooling) approach. But, as is inevitable in many of these narratives, the child (a 16 year old) becomes too much of a burden to the expectations of society and to her parents and even though she argues and argues and is extremely depressed and does all she can to convince the powers that be that she is a person and that she has plans, she...wait for it...meets a superhuman, understanding, unbelievably perceptive teacher at a superinstitutional, unbelievably presented school and decides that, since she's being forced to go back to school, this won't be too bad, and it might even be great!

She's been e-mailing university professors about discoveries on beavers and invasive species, meeting her old, house-ridden neighbor and changing his diabetic foot bandages (whoa!) and learning from him, becoming friends with her parents, doing original research at the library, cooking edible plants, hiking like crazy, but, it's not enough NOTHING is enough), and she gets sucked back in. Pompeii. (Yes, I'm disturbed by the lifesucking).