The Science of Can and Can't by Chiara Marletto

Author:Chiara Marletto [Marletto, Chiara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

A Flight with the Luckdragon

Anne longed for her English teacher to be interesting, passionate, loving, and understanding. That she was none of the above was something that she had learnt to accept over the first five years of school.

The coldness and ill temper of Miss Thornhill—that was her name—had been evident to Anne ever since that middle-aged lady first made her appearance at the school on a sunny, crisp September day. It was Anne’s first day of school and she was filled with hopes for the future, especially regarding her English teacher. Anne loved hearing and reading stories, and she had formed the idea that English classes would be all about stories. Anne’s reverie collided miserably with reality the moment the teacher stepped into the classroom. Miss Thornhill introduced herself with a stiff face and tight lips. Not even the hint of a smile. Her gaze never rested on any of the students’ eyes. She kept her eyes fixed on a distant point, lost somewhere in the light blue paint of the classroom’s back wall. During the first introduction, she launched into a rant against invention and imagination: she wanted her students to forget about all that fairy-tale nonsense, and rather to make sure they knew their grammar properly and were able to tick all the boxes in a test correctly.

Miss Thornhill’s lessons were dry, constellated by notions to memorise. They lacked passion or any kind of intellectual fun. Since that very first day, Anne had known that it would be tough. She wanted to enjoy her lessons, but that seemed to be impossible. She wanted to be able to love her teacher’s methods. But that was impossible, too.

Anne was an imaginative girl. Most children are; but Anne’s imagination was something far out of the ordinary. Ever since she could remember, she had had stories blooming in her head—and not just the stories she read in books. One of her secret delights was to invent and tell stories to herself, whenever she was alone. She would even act them out, playing the speaking parts of all the characters. Of course, she knew that they were not real; but she greatly enjoyed the practice of the mise-en-scène. Over the years, as she mastered her writing, she started writing down some of the best stories in a secret notebook and playacting some with her friends.

This was how Anne devised an ingenious strategy to put up with her insupportable English lessons. She came up with a fantasy, to transform what was there in reality into something nicer to deal with. She invented a teacher—the sort of teacher she would have liked to have, and who, like all good teachers, was also a friend.

Anne’s imaginary teacher was no ordinary teacher. His name was Falkor the Luckdragon. The idea for the Luckdragon had come to Anne while reading about the homonymous character in Michael Ende’s enchanting novel The Neverending Story. But she gave the Luckdragon a much deeper personality. As in the novel, the Luckdragon

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