School has begun, and once again children are learning how to read, encountering the alphabet for the first time. Hopefully it is a pleasant and magical time, but here is a story of a boy who feared his teacher, although he loved the alphabet.

It’s a chapter called The Alphabet and What Lies between the Lines, from Hayim Nahman Bialik’s unfinished Novella, Random Harvest.

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Random Harvest and other Novellas by Haim Nachman Bialik. Translated by David Patterson & Ezra Spicehandler. Toby Press, 2005.