In Solving Zoe by Barbara Dee, Zoe attends a sort of experimental school for gifted kids. It’s the sort of place that C.S. Lewis parodies in The Silver Chair; the school in Solving Zoe is something like the school Eustace and Jill attend. The teachers and the administration pretend that everyone at the school is gifted and allowed to express their talents freely, but when Zoe finds that her only passion is for pizza, she soon discovers that being an ordinary kid with no special talents or passions is not acceptable at Hubbard Middle School.

Sadly enough it is when Zoe is suspended from school and when she is doing her afternoon job babysitting a friend’s pet lizards that she learns and grows and seems to come alive. Her school doesn’t inspire much learning on Zoe’s part, even if the students do call the teachers by their first names and even if Zoe’s math teacher, Anya, tells her that she is free to explore, to just enjoy the numbers. “Numbers are sort of like toys. Try to play with them a little. You know, relax and mess around. Don’t worry about being right or wrong. Just have some fun with them, okay?”

Then, on the same page, Anya tells Zoe that she’s about to fail math because she’s drawing numbers and coloring them instead of doing “actual work.” I can’t figure out whether the author is making fun of the hypocrisy and sheer silliness of a school like Zoe’s, or whether Zoe is really supposed to learn something in such a confusing environment. The most confusing part of the book for me was the part where Zoe is suspended for two weeks to think about her life and about whether or not she really wants to attend Hubbard School, and she decides that she really wants to go back! She spends the two weeks in the library, learning about codes and ciphers and at her lizard-feeding job, learning lots of valuable lessons in responsibility and observation skills. And she seems to enjoy her two weeks of freedom. However, she can’t envision any other alternative than to return to Hubbard, meekly, and try to fit in with her schoolmates who have falsely accused her of a relatively minor “crime” and then blown the nonexistent offense up out of proportion to get Zoe kicked out of school in the first place.

This post isn’t so much a review of the book, which is a decently written story about friendship and about finding your own areas of giftedness. It’s more a biased homeschooler questioning: why would anyone want spend five days a week being given mixed messages and inadequate teaching in a school like Hubbard? And pay money for it?

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This book is also nominated for a Cybil Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own.