Teach Me

Title -Teach Me
Author - R. A. Nelson
ISBN - 1595140840
Publication date - 2005

Plot - Carolina Livingston is in the last year of high school.  She has but a few classes to take and then a world opens up before her.  Everything seems like it should be falling into place just right, and then she meets Mr. Mann.  He is the high school English teacher whose passion seems to emanate from within.  She is enamored by both his words and what he is communicating in class.  Soon she has to spend more time with him.  As they spend more and more time together, the fall into an elicit affair of student and teacher.  He should be the responsible one, but cannot seem to be.  She is lost in her own emotions to him as they proceed to make love for the first time, and the last.  Mr. Mann then abruptly halts everything and all contact with her, trying to end it all. 

A wedding announcement comes for his nuptials and something takes a turn in Carolina.  All of this confusion and heartbreak has converted itself to rage, and she seems bent on trying to destroy everyone and everything.  Trying to interrupt the wedding, spy on the nuptials, and tell his father-in-law that she had been sleeping with her when she was with her daughter..  Eventually she goes as far as taking a paintball gun to a poetry reading to scare Mr. Mann to death.  She drags her friend Schyuler along with her all along the way.  And despite his love and affection for her she almost destroys him as well in the process.  The epilogue consists of her seeing Mr. Mann and his wife, and the baby they had conceived together when she had just met Mr. Mann.  There is a hollow ringing of closure as she sees him as a closed part of her life, ever present, but nevermore.

Reader's Annotation - Why is there something so intriguing about the elicit?  What drives someone to do something that they know is wrong deep down, but they seem powerless to stop it.  R. A. Nelson explores the elicit romance of teacher and pupil in the Novel Teach Me.

About the Author - R.A. Nelson comes from Alabama. His father was a NASA engineer on the Apollo Moon program, so much of his time was spend insular and inventing new things and exploring his imagination.  Nelson views Teach Me, his first major work, as a cautionary tale, describing the plight of a 17/18 year old girl who is still too caught up in her own little world to be able to deal properly with the situation that presents itself with her teacher.  She should be able to take a step back and notice, but she has had control of her own life for too long.  Nelson is very sympathetic to this aspect of her character as much of his life was spent alone because of the long hours his father had to spend away working on the program.

Genre - Drama

Curriculum Ties - Compare and contrast Teach Me with Anna Karenina. How does the love affair proceed?  What is its outcome?  Is it believable?

Booktalking ideas - Engage in a discussion of how the poetry is used in the novel.  How does it support the novel's premise?  Are they an accurate reflection of the feelings of the person using the poetry?  Who uses the poetry and to what effect?

Challenge Issues - The student and teacher have an illicit sexual affair, with seemingly no dire consequences to either.

Overcoming Challenges - Have a list of materials of who to contact when abuse is taking place.  Encourage parents to engage in reading material with their child, and see what they think happened, and why they feel it was wrong.  Have a set of questions available to parents to discuss the book after reading it.

Why included - I was looking for controversial books in the teen lit department and found that this was among the top of the list on many Internet websites.