A School without Classrooms - Michelle Peck

Author: Michelle Peck

Genre: Time Travel, Young Adult.

Rating: 2.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A book with a big heart, but mere heart alone isn't enough to make a memorable reading experience. It went into content I didn't expect to see because the blurb didn't give any clue about the story taking this particular angle. Mixed feelings.

Story Synopsis:

Fifteen year old Rylee is very frustrated in the first year of her high school. With all work and no fun, she dislikes the school environment, though she is a good student. To clear her mind one day during lunch break, she goes for a run in the grove of trees near her school. Suddenly, she finds herself in a new place, and to her surprise, a new time. It's many centuries into the future, and a whole new world. With many attractions to this future utopia, will Rylee be satisfied in her new life, or will she long for the days gone by, though they were flawed?

This is a very tough review to write. As I said above, this is a book with a heart, a very big and optimistic heart. The futuristic planet dreamed up by the author is, in many ways, impeccable. Sustainable farming, organic food, renewable energy, a united community, "schools without classrooms", and of course, amazing technology. Think of everything that would make for your perfect future world, and you'll find it in this paradise on earth.

Furthermore, the author demonstrates her imagination with the kind of technology she has visualised. It's a innovative world that is modern and yet with beliefs rooted in humankind's past such as respect for nature and a strong faith in religion and so on. Her descriptions make that lovely world come alive vividly.

But, and this is the 'but' that twisted my experience from positive to negative, there is a lot of content I didn't expect to find. Going into minor spoilers here, sorry.

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1. The title and the blurb led me to believe that the primary focus of the story was the education system. Though this is covered, it isn't the major focus of the book at all. There are n number of topics raised, thereby diluting the impact of the points about education.

2. I didn't expect faith-oriented preaching to be part of a time travel YA story as the blurb doesn't suggest a religious orientation to the content. I would have been okay with this if it were kept at a generic 'divine presence/power' kind of idea. But the beliefs are very clearly Christian, and worse, the beliefs of another religion are mentioned and negated as being false. This doesn't sync well with me.(Let me clarify, I myself am a practising Christian. So my opinion has nothing to do with the religion but with the writing approach.)

3. There is a comment made about homosexuality being a biological mutation to prevent overpopulation, the cause of this mutation being stress and dysfunctional societal structures. No, no, no, no, no! Big red flag for this one.

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The above spoilers mention the major issues I had with the story. But even beyond these, the book was very clearly a debut attempt. There's a lot of telling. There's the umbrella coverage of too many important ideas without focusing on a few. The dialogues over-explain things/events the way no one would speak in real life. Many chapters feel repetitive in content, with healthy food, positive beliefs, harmonious family relations, and a community spirit being the recurrent themes. All of these are good points, but it gets boring after a while. Also, scenes are described but characters aren't. Somehow, the character sketching comes off as very surface-level. 

The characters in the future world are also too goody-goody. I didn't understand how none of them were confused, forget about being shocked, that Rylee had time-travelled from 2019. They seem to accept it immediately without any question.

Also, the book gets too philosophical at times, and unfortunately, philosophy isn't among the genres I like to read.

Basically, it's a very ambitious debut work and it means well. There are a lot of ideas that are very hopeful and beautiful at the same time. But the content that didn't click with me had quite major issues and I simply can't ignore those. Those with a more conservative approach might appreciate it better.