March, 2010
Michael Krasner, the Institute’s Co-Director and Associate Professor of Political Science at Queens College of the City University of New York, writes:

I’ve been reading “Write Naked” by Peter Gould, a wonderful coming-of-age novel about a teen aged boy who uses a manual Royal typewriter from a yard sale to narrate his adventures as a fledgling writer who meets another fledgling writer, a home-schooled young woman who uses an antique fountain pen to create an engrossing fable about global warming. Set in Vermont, the book interweaves the narratives to strong effect—the two young writers meet in an isolated cabin to exchange their work and to deepen their relationship while the characters in the ecological fable hold a meeting that eerily presages Katrina.

With appealing and well drawn characters and a plot that includes both the adolescents’ gentle explorations of sexuality and the climate crisis, the book should hold the attention of high school students of both genders, especially those with a social conscience.

Peter Gould, Write Naked. Melanie Kroupa Books. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
New York, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-374-38483-8, ISBN-10:0-374-38483-5