The Book of Annotations

Middle school, quixotic mishaps, and music appreciation

A charter school love story


Special thank you’s to my readers: Stephanie, James, Brian, Pat, Ben, Elliot, and Mom and Dad

I'm in the process of trying to get this edited and published, so contact me with suggestions and your name, too, could appear in this illustrious list!


See below for some notes on the story and links for further reading/listening/playing



After moving to Spokane in the summer of 2016, while my time in Arizona was still fresh in my mind, I set out to write a book of essays about working in schools, much like the stuff I write on this blog. I still want to write that book, and will post it here when it is ready for other people to read. All of a sudden, however, it was November again, and I found myself more and more interested in treating some of those same ideas in a story, instead. I picked up where I'd left off the year before in the Book of Annotations, pitched in Nanowrimo for that year as, It's the book your brothers and sisters read, and now you're reading it, too--is it the same? Or something like that. And because this year Steph really wanted that t-shirt, I completed a hundred-page draft.

So while this is a work of fiction, it certainly intersects with history in a number of ways:

There's my blog, again, but also some by friends and co-workers that I had in mind

The kids in the CPA Authors Club told me about nanowrimo

A sample of Harriet's blog can be found at Shynamics. The artist she digs is Sufjan Stevens

I took an Old English course on Signum, which specializes in Tolkien studies and fantasy lit

My preferred fan community is starmen.net; its founders have since had a lot of success over at fangamer

After I left the school and was back visiting, I happened to hear about the internet-famous youtuber The Odd 1s Out, who briefly attended Chandler Prep and mentions some of his teachers and experiences in his videos

Rory and I love Undertale. He reads about EarthBound and Itoi's letter. See if you can find his level on Mario Maker

Mrs Lawson loans Noel (Noelle?) a book by Ambedkar

There's Fabian's poetry lifted for Mr Thomas' friend from Ecuador. I'm still working on translating that

Brian's song for Lea has the intriguing title Quixotijos and Arpeggios

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