No Child Left Behind

In this unconventional near-future novel, attorney Casser brings together a small municipality’s educational boondoggles with possible mass extinction. Geoff Moraine is a young student struggling with a learning disability and in desperate need of proper educational support. He has a vivid imagination, but even he couldn’t have envisioned aliens from a parallel universe buying a hilltop estate in Pennsylvania to turn into a boarding school. The school is camouflage for their true objective of building weapons to wipe out the “snouts” who are conquering their home planet of Fulgora. Lord Kemp of the Fulgorans unfortunately hasn’t heard of zoning laws, which prevent the development of a school on that hill, and Geoff’s mom has to step in and use her legal know-how to help the Fulgorans save their world. Mrs. Moraine’s brilliant solution solves Geoff’s problem as well as the aliens’: if the Fulgorans take on teaching the high-level special-ed kids, that could sway the zoning commission’s approval. Now they just have to get around the No Child Left Behind laws. Casser’s fanciful invective against the educational system’s quirks mixes weirdly with annihilation-focused SF. The prose is solid; the plot is bemusing. [em](BookLife) [/em]