A book’s origins often reach back to childhood. This one reaches back to my children’s childhood, specifically to one evening during my daughter’s third grade year when I heard an abrupt sound from the dining room table like twigs snapping. It was the logical, even-tempered eight-year-old Sophie Frank violently breaking number 2 pencils.
She couldn’t solve Mr. Hall’s weekly sudoku for homework.
So thank you, Sophie, for that uncharacteristic destruction of property; and thank you, Mr. Hall, for the age-inappropriate assignment. (She loved him, by the way, for his clarity and calm.)
And thank you, Sam, my son who drowned in homework at that same dining room table, mere feet from the piano he longed to play.
And thank you, Mia, my daughter who really did bring home a word search puzzle in which she had to find the word “school” forty-four times.
I’m also grateful to Alfie Kohn for his disruptive thinking about education so passionately offered in books like The Homework Myth and Feel-Bad Education.
To my fellow teachers who struggle with the idea of homework, not just because they have to grade it, but because they wonder if it really helps kids learn.
Gratitude again to my agent, Kevin O’Connor, whose enthusiasm and insight made the second draft almost as much fun as the first.
To Margaret Raymo, still a dream editor: I didn’t have to break any pencils for you.
To Sharismar Rodriguez and Andy Smith for designing and drawing a cover that proclaims the power of kids with a cause.
Gratitude to my parents, Merona and Marty Frank, for being here.
To Julie Ferber Frank, a fierce advocate for the children in our home and the ones in this book. And for her wise contributions to the book itself.
Finally to you, Reader, for your gift of attention and time.