First tooth, first word, all my firsts were recorded lovingly by my parents in a baby keepsake book. They treasured my every expression of being from kindergarten finger painting, handprints pressed into clay, pages of addition-subtraction exercises, report cards. When I left home for college I went through the accumulation and winnowed it down to a foot-locker full of mementos.

Deep in our storage basement is that footlocker and deep in that footlocker are a collection of my school reports. And, yes, in that stack of reports was my book report about Thomas More’s Utopia. I knew I must have saved it for 42 years for a reason and this week the reason revealed itself.

 

 

Here is my book report complete with the teacher’s corrections in red. Utopia book report

Whether or not More’s Utopia actually predicted the future is up for grabs. There have always been arguments pro and con about his proposal. We might not have taken up his inventive alphabet and poetry but his ideas about an elected government, freedom of speech and religion, public health and education, an economy planned for the good of all, compassionate justice and little crime, all sound pretty good today.