Teach Me
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Teach Me

3.5 of 5 stars 3.50  ·  rating details  ·  1,092 ratings  ·  180 reviews
Teach Me invites readers inside an experience that fascinates everyone—. An affair between a teacher and student, —and gives an up-close-and-personal answer to the question: How does this happen?

The hardcover edition of Teach Me was a Booksense Fall 2006 Kid’s Pick, a TeenReads.com Best Book of 2005, and a selection for the 2006 NYPL Books for the Teen Age.
Paperback, 272 pages
Published March 22nd 2007 by Razorbill
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Vampire Academy by Richelle MeadTeach Me by R.A. NelsonPretty Little Liars by Sara ShepardInnocents by Cathy CooteBoy Toy by Barry Lyga
Student-Teacher Affair Novels
2nd out of 46 books — 97 voters
Someone Like You by Sarah DessenForever by Judy BlumeDreamland by Sarah DessenGo Ask Alice by Beatrice SparksAfter by Amy Efaw
YA Sex & Pregnancy Novels
29th out of 178 books — 250 voters


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Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,278)
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Danielle Harlow
Maybe I am just too old-- but I really didn't like this book at all. I force myself to read all the way to the end of any book I start, because I feel like you really never know.. but at the end of this book-- I just wished I had a time machine to go back before I bought it. I think that, yes, obviously when you write a book, it is going to reflect your personally somewhat, but while I was reading this book- I couldn't help but feeling like the author wanted to include ALL her interests- to an e...more
Hana❦Joy
I got about 200 pages in and I could not do it, this was fucking terrible! Though I did like the first 80 pages and the whole lovey dovey parts, those where pretty sweet. And i'm sure if Alicia didn't make an entrance Nine and Mr.Mann might have actually stayed together after she graduated. Stupid, stupid, Alicia....
Parting thoughts:

Caroline is fucking insane
Mr. Mann is a douche, but a sexy douche.

EDIT:


And I mean it, he is one sexy douche. ...more
Melissa
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Sherrybaby
i picked this book up again! &+ was seriously mad at myself for taking so long to read it. This book has the perfect amount of love, lost, breakdown, survival, and friendship.

Poor nine falls head over heels for a new male teacher.
teacher, starts flirting with nine, until there in a deep passionate
love affair. But when nine turns eighteen things take an awful turn,
mr. man doesnt want to be in a relationship with her anymore!
even worse he thinks they shouldnt ...more
priscilla
priscilla rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: ya
Novels about teacher/student affairs always both repulse & intrigue me, especially YA novels. The first one I read was Gone by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson, about a post-graduation summer fling between a male senior and his pretty, young, former teacher. The story was crushingly sad & overtly sexual, & it had an overall half-baked feeling to it, unable to compensate for such a disturbing & depressing story with stellar writing.
Teach Me reverses the genders & sets the story during the school ye...more
Susan
Susan rated it 1 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: people interested in student-teacher relationships
Shelves: 2008read, youngadult
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Heyrebekah Alm
Heyrebekah Alm rated it 1 of 5 stars
Shelves: fiction
This will teach me to buy books at random from the bargain bin. Oh well, at least it was a quick read. I'm not the target audience anyway, and maybe I would have loved it when I was in high school. The narrator does not sound like a teenager to me at all. But yet, the book does seem to have been written by a teenager.
Leisha senko
this book was amazing. i read it while on vacation. i picked it up in a tiny book store in collingwood by mistake. at first i thought it would be sleezy or really have no plot but i found that it was full of emotion and twists that you don't see coming. i love how the author didn't make the teacher having the affair into a sleazy, villianous type. the book had many layers to it and showed the complexities and ability for even the smartest student and most noble teacher to fall into this sort of ...more
Diamond
Diamond rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: kindle
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Niki
Niki rated it 5 of 5 stars
In modern day America, the idea of romances between teacher & student are becoming more & more common. "Teach Me" by RA Nelson is a novel full of love, lust, beauty & disaster. Carolina "Nine" Livingston, a high school senior with expectations bigger than the small city in Alabama she resides in, falls head over heels for her new English teacher, Mr. Richard Mann. Mr. Mann is a genuine individual that Nine is undeniably attracted to for his looks, unique brand of humor, & ...more
Lynleigh
Does the teacher also fall in love with the student?
Mr. Mann does indeed fall for Carolina. You can see as their relationship grows he seems more and more intrigued by her.

Does Carolina believe her and Mr. Mann are meant to be? Yes she believes they are meant to be because of her reactions throughout the relationship. She is always beseeching him to just be with her and forget life in general besides them together.

Who truly loves and cares for Carolina as more th...more
Heather
Wow. What can I say. We've all had our crushes on teachers, but it was interesting to see it be reciprocated. Though every part of me was saying, "This is weird," or "this is so wrong," I could not help but want everything to work out ok for Mr. Mann and Nine.
It was hard to get a grasp of what Nine looked like and I was frustrated because I couldn't mentally connect to someone like her, but then I realized that we're in her head. We aren't supposed to know what she loo...more
Barky
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Chelsea
I struggled with how to rate this book because it was simultaneously a good, interesting read, and a bizarre, over-the-top one. The narrator, Nine (Carolina) is a teenage girl that begins having an affair with her English teacher, Mr. Mann. At first, I loved Carolina's voice and the way she thought-- she acted much more mature than her peers, and her mind seemed very open and emotional. The author progresses the two characters' relationship in a way that makes the readers empathize with Nine and...more
Leah
Leah rated it 3 of 5 stars
From the start, TEACH ME enraptured me with its evocative language. R.A. Nelson has a poetic sensibility, effortlessly drawing metaphors from astrophysics in spare, luminous prose. There's something of the spirit of Emily Dickinson in Nelson's writing, which is fitting, as Dickinson's work figures prominently in the book. Even the chapter titles read like poetry. One chapter in particular stands out: titled "Heat Death of the Universe," it contains a single devastating sentence.

...more
Courtney Cook
This book is wonderful for all upcoming teachers and teens to read. Set in a small town in Alabama, Carolina becomes obsessed with her English teacher, Mr. Mann. Throughout Carolina’s senior year, the two become romantically involved, just to have Mr. Mann get married to his legitimate girlfriend before the school year is over. I really enjoyed this book. Be warned however, it is consuming! Carolina reminds me of the bored senior I was in high school and Mr. Mann reminds me of that one good-loo...more
David Valliere
I should mention that I am a male high school teacher in training; my review will be biased because of this, despite my love of science-related imagery.
Teach Me is a book about a very taboo relationship. A young, female, virgin student falls for an inspired, involved, male teacher. Still, despite its inclination toward what is considered to be socially unacceptable, this novel is written very well. The main character, channeling her NASA-employed father, uses astronomical, astrological, a...more
Meryl
Meryl rated it 2 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: people interested in dirty relationships and disappointment.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Steph Su
Love, obsession, and revenge all come together in this dizzying and sensuous tale. In her senior year of high school, Carolina “Nine” Livingston falls hard for her new English teacher, the beautiful, poetry-loving Mr. Mann, who quotes Emily Dickinson all the time. Mr. Mann makes Nine feel things she didn’t even know she could feel, and she believes that the two of them will one day live together, marry, and go on their dream honeymoon.

Then a sudden announcement from Mr. Mann changes ev...more
Kimberly

Uncomfortable topic? Yes. Well written? Yes.

Carolina "Nine" begins a parent's nightmare of having an affair with her
teacher, the complicated, tortured and sensitive Mr. Mann. As the
romance intensifies, and then abruptly ends, Nine must deal with the
consequences and face who they were to each other; great loves or
mr./mrs. right now. As with most teenage breakups, this one is full of
drama, loathing, conflicted feelings and anger. But unlike...more
Rhiannon Hart
Carolina "Nine" Livingstone, an apt name for the daughter of a physicist, takes a poetry unit for her last semester of high school thinking it will give her a broader scope on life. It does that all right. For while Nine has plenty of smarts, she's not so accomplished when it comes to relationships. Nine falls for the new poetry teacher hard and fast, and it isn't long until Mr Mann begins to respond to Nine's hankering to be taught.

What surprised me when I picked this book...more
Stacey
Stacey rated it 2 of 5 stars
I didn't like this book very much. I can see how the content or topic might cause others to not like it too, but in fact, the topic of a student/teacher affair was the one part of this that didn't bother me. For some it hits a squick factor, but that isn't the problem at all in my case. In fact, that was the part that drew me to the book in the first place.

The problem for me was the narrator. Maybe it is just that I am not prone to teenage narrators - not being a frequent reader of YA ...more
Diamond
Diamond rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: kindle
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Grace S.
Okay, I basically got interested in this because it involves a student/teacher affair. I'm sort of a sucker for those kind of story lines. Even though I find those topics interesting, I wasn't expecting to actually like it, because I thought it would be the same as teacher/student relationships portrayed on tv shows but it wasn't it.

I really love the fact that Nine and Mr. Mann really did love each other and it wasn't just about sex or anything you expect from a student/teacher relati...more
Summer Raine
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Janet
The synopsis? A smart, pretty, very tall loner senior joins a poetry class to kill time. The result is one teacher she can't ignore; he is everything she sees in a man and their love affair is a tension-building, romantic fantasy come true. "Giving every notion of right and wrong" their affair takes a tumble after Mr. Mann leaves her and marries. The result? A compulsive obsession with extreme focus.
The protagonist is Carolina "NINE" Livingston. A young woman who is sup...more
Heather Wade
This might be my new favorite book! I read this book in one day. It is SUCH a page turner and I couldn’t put it down because I couldn’t find a place to put it down. There was one thing after another that intrigued me and kept me on my toes. Nelson does a wonderful job of really capturing the obsession of a teenage girl who has fallen for her male teacher. I think it is great that the entire book was written from the point of view of the Carolina, because you never really know what Mr. Mann is th...more
Karina Garcia
I picked up Teach Me in high school and felt giddy as I started to read it. I was interested in the topic and the story started out great, but as it progressed, I found it hard to continue. The main character was a “typical” teenage girl that I don’t think many teenage girls like to think of themselves as.

Being around the same age as the character, I was turned off by the characters choices and remember thinking to myself “only a moron would do something like that”. As a writer, I h...more
Kaisa
Kaisa rated it 3 of 5 stars
I rate this 3,5/5... just so you know.

I'm shocked that I'm not giving it a higher rating. I really am!! Especially the part of me that read the first half of the book (well... that sentence doesn't make sense), because that part of me LOVED it to death!!... But yeah, then the second part of the book came along and I started getting frustrated.
Not at the writing.
NEVER at the writing.
Oh, R.A. Nelson, you write like I write in my dreams. Witty, clever, interesting... alway...more
Katie
Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: books-i-own
I’ve read so many novels about student/teacher relationships, so I was a little skeptical about this one, but I just after the first chapter, I knew it was going to be different.

The entire story is told through Carolina‘s, or Nine as she’s nicknamed, point of view. She’s probably one of the most unique and different characters I’ve ever read. Her thoughts aren’t ever really focused on one thing. She’s what you call a scatter-brain, but it works very well. Her story is full of complet...more
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R.A. Nelson is the author of the novels TEACH ME and BREATHE MY NAME, both nominated to the YALSA Best Books for Young Adults list. Nelson’s third book is DAYS OF LITTLE TEXAS, coming out on July 14 with Knopf. He is working on his fourth book, THROAT, slated for Fall 2010, also with Knopf.

Nelson was chosen as a Horn Book Newcomer in 2005 and his books have been recognized by the New Y...more
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“This is the thing about life I've never really understood until now: we try so hard to control it, but bad things happen anyway. The only real control is an anti-control, a letting go.” 26 people liked it
“There is not a name for what I'm feeling. There is no description for it.
To call it yearning would be like calling the ocean water.
Whatever this thing is, it shoves you inside itself and you can't measure its boundaries because they go too far and you don't have enough time. Or you move toward the boundaries and they move away.
There has been an earthquake in my life.
Catastrophic, civilization-ending.”
21 people liked it
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