beartown revisited

 The first time I read Beartown was in 2018. 2018 was a big year for "favorite books"--my top three were books that I still look back upon very fondly, and actually, all three are books I made the school purchase to teach to various grades. Okay for Now for 7th, Beartown for 10th, Life After Death for American Lit, or 11/12th graders. My tenth graders just started Beartown. I just finished re-reading to create assignments and quizzes for it.

To set the scene, today in Creative Writing, it was a Reading Day. Reading Day is something every class has once a week. They have to sit and read quietly for the whole period. Every time they talk or I see a phone or something of the sort, they lose a point. They have ten points to lose. If they lose all ten points, they get sent to the principal's for being a disturbance. Only two kids have ever lost all ten points. All of my sophomores are in Creative Writing as well as English II. One of these kids is my younger sister, and today she was working on Beartown, and by the end of the period, she was crying. 

I mean, I'm not that mean. I don't like, love it when my students cry. Unless they're crying over a book (and not because they hate it). And like, she wasn't even at the sad part yet. She hasn't even gotten attached to Benji yet, and Benji is the best character in the series. Another sophomore, at the end of that period (she was also working on Beartown), told me that this was the first book she'd connected to. The other books we read as a class were The Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, and Fahrenheit 451, for reference, and those are all great books, but like. Beartown is from the 21st century instead of the 50s, which I'm sure helps.

(Note: just because a book is old doesn't mean people won't connect! The freshmen just finished The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and fucking loved it.)

But I finished my re-read today. I didn't cry this time, not all the way. The only reason I didn't was because I was reading it in twenty-five page chunks. That's what I generally require as an assignment length, is about twenty-five pages. Those last few chapters, though. At the end, talking about the coaches, about Amat, Zacharias, Bobo, and Benji--two playing professionally, one with kids, one dead. I mean, I've read this entire series by now, so I know which is which, and I know that it's Backman trying to fake you out. "Playing" doesn't necessarily mean "playing hockey," and he wants you to think Zacharias will die but like. Zacharias isn't the kid who pressed down harder on his broken foot because physical pain he could bear but emotional pain he couldn't. 

I'm gonna fucking die, man, and all I want to do is re-read the rest of the series.