cover image ANOTHER PLANET: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School

ANOTHER PLANET: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School

Elinor Burkett, Eli Burkett, . . HarperCollins, $26 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-06-621148-0

In the wake of Columbine, journalist Burkett (The Baby Boon) attempts to plumb the mysteries of suburban high school by spending the 1999–2000 school year at Prior Lake High School in Prior Lake, Minn., near Minneapolis. In expanding what could have been a two- or three-part magazine article into a full-length book, she adds little to the national debates on school safety or education. Each chapter not only has a date, but a time, and each also focuses on a different aspect of school life, from Friday night sports to segregation in the school cafeteria. While many of the phenomena Burkett describes have been written about before, she does deal sensitively with administrative and parental fears as the first anniversary of the Columbine shootings draws near. She shows that the students are not brave for overcoming their anxieties and coming to school on April 20, but foolhardy for driving stoned; the date was also Smokers' New Year, the international pot holiday. An accomplished writer, Burkett occasionally loses her way when she tries to take readers inside the minds of teachers and students. Similarly, footnotes or endnotes to support blanket statements—such as schools with "zero tolerance" rules are less safe than those without, or teenagers are not looking forward to freedom and independence as their parents' generation did—would have been a helped. Still, this snapshot of one community's struggles to educate its kids will dispel preconceptions of suburban high schlers as violent and ill-prepared. (Oct. 1)