Ms. Hempel Chronicles » (Unabridged)

I thought I was getting cranked, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum told New York Magazine of the moment when she received the call informing her that her dreamlike debut novel, Madeline is Sleeping, was a 2004 National Book Award finalist. I think it s an incredibly odd choice, she humbly reflects.

Ms. Beatrice Hempel, teacher of seventh grade, is new—new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her idiosyncratic father. Grappling awkwardly with her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words into the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex-education class?

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum finds characters at their most vulnerable, then explores those precarious moments in sharp, graceful prose. From this most innovative of young writers comes another journey down the rabbit hole to the wonderland of middle school, memory, daydreaming, and the extraordinary business of growing up.

The Barnes & Noble Review

School, site of routine cruelties and uneven growth; snarky power plays and miniscule victories; awkward popularity contests and painful falls from grace, is perhaps such an ideal setting for literature because, like book-space, school-space stands in ambiguous relation to the world beyond its borders. Like any narrative, the school year's arc compresses the social politics of the world beyond. Especially in the younger years, school has some of the qualities of a dream: summer evaporates it; fall reassembles it at new angles. Many, if not most, books about school capture the stumbling reality of coming of age as a student. Fewer venture into the more nettlesome territory of coming of age as a teacher.

Talent 1

Accomplice 23

Sandman 49

Creep 75

Crossing 101

Yurt 123

Satellite 149

Bump 175

Acknowledgments 195