Middle school mayhem, fun, and lessons in etiquette abound!

Announcing:  Laurel LeMay and the Mystery of Merriweather Abbey. 

Available now at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle version.

 

 I hope this blog will help parents, grandparents, guardians and teachers who want to discuss themes in my new book. I have always loved cotillions. There are great mysteries within dance, within those magical moments.....

"She became the dance. She had no feeling of self, only of being lost in the incredible gift of the movement and the glorious music, her long dress and her slippers becoming one with her and she with them. She had no idea how well she moved...everything had led to this glorious moment! It was all she had ever dreamed of."

(Excerpt, Laurel LeMay and the Mystery of Merriweather Abbey, copyright Kathryn Forrester-Thro. All rights reserved.)

I recently appeared at the Mary D. Pretlow Branch Library in Norfolk, Virginia to discuss serious themes in this otherwise humorous coming-of-age book. These themes may be of interest to anyone helping young people face the challenges of bullying, and might assist some in expressing the need for a return to an appreciation of manners, etiquette and compassion in today's society. 

What are your thoughts about modern media influences, peer pressure and the problems of bullying?  Has "texting" replaced social niceties and eye contact? Where are we headed? 

William Butler Yeats said

"For where else but in custom and in ceremony is beauty to be born?

Have we lost something of the "old school" values? Is this good or bad? While we're certainly more tolerant and understanding of societal challenges,  have parents lost their authority? 

One of my recommendations at my library appearance was to encourage the reading of classic literature. For in the works of Dickens, Austen and the like, we find heroes and heroines who act chivalrously. We learn lessons within the pages of a book which may keep us from having to learn them the hard way. We learn to identify heroes as well as villains. 

Who can read Jane Eyre and not aspire to act heroically? Who can read Shakespeare and not understand the deepest feelings shared by all mankind? We learn to rejoice as his heroes did and also to lament with them: "Oh, Hamlet, what a falling off was there!"  We learn of human dignity, reading of the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, " and of the "thousand shocks that flesh is heir to." Our challenges, we learn, are not new. We are each unique, but with a bond of brotherhood and sisterhood that should inspire us to chivalry.

Another idea is to expose young children to classical music. Play Brahms at bedtime,  and empower children to choose "Boom Boom Beethoven" or "Happy Handel" at lunchtime.  Children are smarter than we give them credit for.  Opera playing in the home background is a good substitute for loud television commercials.  Acting out musical theatre show tunes make for a lively evening, and memorizing lines from appropriate songs help with focusing on tasks, and building public speaking skills children will need later. 

Children love to learn by laughing. Some of the characters in my book are far from well-mannered and live to regret it. We have a bully- to- end- all bullies and an etiquette teacher who does her best to inspire good manners in her middle school students.  Miss Merriweather also happens to own a very mysterious abbey where just about anything can happen. 

Beyond the walls of the great abbey is a larger world. I hope everyone who experiences the antics at Merriweather Abbey will come away with more than a rollicking good read.  Seeing things done the right and the wrong way may affect real life. We can all have a good time learning the difference. 

A barrel of laughter, a great mystery. A dash of etiquette and a good dose of old- fashioned manners may just be good for all of us. I hope so! Anyone who's ever attended middle school or junior high may well remember the agonies and ecstasies of all those gauntlets we all somehow managed to survive. 

And  so, Dear Reader, I welcome your thoughts! 

Yours,
Kathryn