buzbee, lewis

"Buzbee looks back over a lifetime of experiences in schools and classrooms, from kindergarten to college and beyond. He offers ... histories of the key ideas informing educational practice over the centuries, which have shaped everything from class size to the layout of desks and chairs. Buzbee ... weaves his own biography into this overview, approaching his subject as a student, a father, and a teacher"--Amazon.com.

Unhappy after his parents move to a weird subdivision and become workaholics, thirteen-year-old Travis returns to his old Salinas neighborhood and becomes actively involved in saving the John Steinbeck Library and, at the same time, begins seeing characters from Steinbeck's books who seem to have a message for him.