Summary

Christina discusses the local school that she and her brother attend. It is one-and-a-half miles away from their home, and they must walk there. Christina has trouble because of her infirmity and often stumbles and falls. Christina enjoys the academic aspects of school, but some of the other kids bully her because of her infirmity. Al has little interest in school and simply wants to become a fisherman. Christina loves reading and doing schoolwork, and the teacher, Mrs. Crowley even obliges Christina’s requests for more work to do and more books to read. In school, the children learn about the Salem witch trials, the chief prosecutor of which was John Hathorne, an ancestor of Christina’s mother. John Hathorne used the trials to target deviant women and reinforce social norms. In school, they also study poems by Emily Dickinson. Christina enjoys the poems...