Book: Dear, Mrs. LaRue
Author: Mark Teague
Dear, Anonymous
The end of a friendship is heartbreaking and, somewhat selfishly, I didn’t want to be the one to end it. I knew it would happen eventually with you going off to college and me switching schools. If I were the one to end the friendship, I’d feel more guilty than I already do. Even though I was hurt when our friendship ended it still felt like it was supposed to happen. It was not preventable or prolonged, because I trust you. The only thing I regret is that we did not have a proper goodbye.
Missing you more than ever,
Nadia
P.S. I blame myself, and I’m not even sure what for
P.P.S. I hope that someday I’ll see you again.
Dear Mrs. LaRue is the story of a dog named Ike, an obedience school, and a typewriter. The book shifts between two perspectives: the present and Ike’s often overly imaginative past. During his stay at Igor Brotweiler Canine Academy, Ike writes his troubles to his owner, Mrs. LaRue, in letters. His tales are exaggerated, to say the least, since Ike is a melodramatic hypochondriac who misses his home. However, Ike recognizes his mistakes and tries to rationalize them as he desperately begs Mrs. LaRue to pick him up from the academy, which is actually not that bad.
I often express myself while writing in journals to provide closure from those who hurt me and to understand my mistakes. Letter by letter, entry by entry my life becomes clear again. There’s no uncertainty, no pain, just honesty found between the scribbles and incorrectly used semicolons.
Dear, Nameless
I forgive too easily, and I trusted you too quickly. You used that against me, even, when you were apologizing to me. You got my own friends to lie for you. Who am I supposed to trust now? Who are my real friends? I’ll never be the same person because of you, but you get to keep living like nothing happened. How is that fair? You guys weren’t my friends, anyway. You couldn’t even be my outright enemies. I may have been naive, I’ll admit that, but what you did to me emotionally…I just can’t explain it, but I’m glad I can finally heal from it.
I wish you all the best,
Nadia
Mistakes. While good memories are all around us, the bad ones still manage to haunt us.
With every swish of his pencil and click of the key on his typewriter, Ike writes his story, mistakes and all. Dear, Mrs. LaRue gives a sincere lesson to all children, teens, and adults seeking to find understanding. The letters of Ike and the book Dear, Mrs. LaRue tells readers that it’s okay to be confused and hurt by your past, that it’s normal to make mistakes, but you have to learn from them not harbor them. The past is not something you should dwell on, as Ike displays when he works towards his future by trying to find his own way home.
Writing allows us to cope while finding meaning to what has happened to us as we tell a personal narrative. It doesn't matter if you can write or not, simply put words on a page to see what you might discover.
I hope my letters and stories will find me in better stages of my life to fly me away in a series of tears and struggles, through laughs and butterflies.