Homeschooled: A Memoir

Novelist Block (Life Lessons) delivers a wrenching account of his traumatic homeschooling in suburban Texas. Block’s eccentric, emotionally fragile mother convinced him at a young age that he would be “the next Charles Dickens,” and homeschooled him beginning at age nine in an attempt to protect him from being stifled by a traditional education. Her insistence on “rescuing” Block’s creativity led to bizarre pedagogical experiments, including forcing him to crawl like a baby to test his motor control at age 12. Though he occasionally excelled, especially in math, Block paints a portrait of a childhood warped by codependency and unmet emotional needs. “Mom wanted only to hide away with everything she held dear,” he writes, theorizing that this yearning was instilled in her by a childhood bout with polio. “It was exactly that hiding, and that holding too close, that took everything from her.” He resists sensationalism or blanket indictments of homeschooling, but his testimony offers a sobering glimpse into what lobbyists have wrought by convincing politicians to strip away federal oversight in the name of “parental freedom.” Lyrical, harrowing, and politically pointed, this is both a moving coming-of-age story and a clarion call for reform. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown. (Jan.)