ReEnchantment
a schoolboys' adventure
by
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When school started that first fall following the move, Miriam was as excited as her children. The summer had given Julia plenty of time to meet new friends and her baby-sitting enterprise was a booming success. Mark had not expanded his universe much beyond Tim except for the installation of Island Trekkers; and those boys were Tim’s age. But things were bound to change once he entered his fifth grade classroom and looked around at thirty new faces. On the first day of school, Miriam ignored both of her children’s requests to ride with friends and drove them to school herself. She compromised with Julia and dropped her off at a spot where nobody might see her in her mother’s car with a fifth grade brother. Mark wasn’t so particular. He had wanted to ride with Tim and his mom but didn’t make a fuss when Miriam said no. She entered the driveway to the parking lot at the elementary school, determined that she would accompany her son onto the school yard but was immediately confronted by a middle aged woman wearing a brightly colored vinyl vest and directing drivers to keep driving forward. Ahead, she saw cars with passenger doors opening and youngsters emerging with backpacks and lunch containers of various sizes and colors. She pulled her car next to the first traffic monitor and lowered her window. “Good morning,” Miriam began. “I’d like to go with my son, we’re new and it’s the first–” “Keep it moving,” stated the person with the bright vinyl vest. “We need all the children dropped off in the green zone. Keep moving.” “But I....” Miriam only wanted to know where she could park and was about to ask again when she was startled into driving forward by the sound of a car horn. In no time she was in the green zone and telling Mark to get out of the car, quickly adding as he compulsively hurried that she would park somewhere and meet up with him on the school yard where he had attended the Summer Day Camp. By the time she found a parking place in the residential neighborhood that surrounded the school and walked into the lunch area where she told Mark to meet her, bells were ringing and in the distance a loudspeaker was providing amplified but garbled assistance to a man’s voice... no one was in the lunch area.
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About the Book
Following a husband’s job promotion and the family’s move to California, the Jacobsens are content to trust their children’s education to the local public schools until a calamity forces these parents to look more closely at what’s been going on – there aren’t any Christmas Carols at the Winter Festival, and a bully has been stealing their son’s lunch. As Miriam unpacks her family’s lives we learn more about these folks from the Midwest, and we meet Peter, their crotchety neighbor whose resumé includes teaching at parochial schools and a local college, but whose unkempt yard and life – just like the selfish giant’s in Oscar Wilde’s story – hasn’t seen Spring for years. Yet things can change! When the Jacobsens realize that educating their kids is their primary responsibility – with God’s help and that of some new friends, real and make believe – they find the courage to slay the modern day dragons in their way. Beginning with the Prologue, ReEnchantment is a story laced with bits of magic and whimsy as the reader is reminded of memorable children’s tales and hints of literary plots while they and the story’s fictional family learn how much fun and moral instruction can exist in the pages of a book. It’s an exciting story of adventure, and a journey of growth that the entire family will enjoy.
About the Author
What parent in America isn't frustrated by what we call the public school, and wouldn't like to be creatively prodded into looking at another way to "raise their child up in the way they should go?" Kenneth Larson lives in southern California with his wife and family. A veteran of business and community affairs, Ken has also served as a member of a regional school board and has edited a school department web site for which he authored numerous articles on education issues. He also has published features and movie reviews. His two daughters attended both public and parochial schools, but the youngest girl completed the Twelfth Grade at home. ReEnchantment is his first novel.