number of pages in homework machine

• Sign up and get a free ebook!
• Don't miss our $0.99 ebook deals!

The Homework Machine

Trade Paperback

LIST PRICE $7.99

Buy from Other Retailers

• Amazon logo
• Bookshop logo

Table of Contents

About the book, about the author.

Dan Gutman hated to read when he was a kid. Then he grew up. Now he writes cool books like The Kid Who Ran for President ; Honus & Me ; The Million Dollar Shot ; Race for the Sky ; and The Edison Mystery: Qwerty Stevens, Back in Time . If you want to learn more about Dan or his books, stop by his website at DanGutman.com.

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (June 26, 2007)
• Length: 176 pages
• ISBN13: 9780689876790
• Grades: 3 - 7
• Ages: 8 - 12
• Fountas & Pinnell™ R These books have been officially leveled by using the F&P Text Level Gradient™ Leveling System

Browse Related Books

• Age 12 and Up
• Children's Fiction > Social Themes > Adolescence & Coming of Age
• Children's Fiction > Social Situations > Adolescence
• Children's Fiction > School & Education
• Children's Fiction > Humorous Stories

Awards and Honors

• ILA/CBC Children's Choices
• Maud Hart Lovelace Award Nominee (MN)
• Booklist Editors' Choice
• South Carolina Picture Book Award Nominee
• Iowa Children's Choice Award Nominee
• Young Hoosier Book Award Nominee (IN)
• Indian Paintbrush Book Award Nominee (WY)
• Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best
• Nutmeg Book Award Nominee (CT)
• Colorado Children's Book Award Master List
• Child Magazine's Guide to Top Books, Videos and Software of the Year
• Pacific Northwest Young Reader's Choice Award Master List
• Volunteer State Book Award Nominee (TN)
• Virginia Readers' Choice Award List
• Prairie Pasque Award Nominee (SD)
• Land of Enchantment RoadRunner Award Nominee (NM)
• Nene Award Nominee (HI)
• Sunshine State Young Readers' Award List (FL)
• Massachusetts Children's Book Award Nominee
• Golden Sower Award (NE)
• Sasquatch Book Award Nominee (WA)

Resources and Downloads

High resolution images.

• Book Cover Image (jpg): The Homework Machine Trade Paperback 9780689876790 (2.4 MB)

Get a FREE ebook by joining our mailing list today!

Plus, receive recommendations and exclusive offers on all of your favorite books and authors from Simon & Schuster.

More books from this author: Dan Gutman

You may also like: Thriller and Mystery Staff Picks

More to Explore

Limited Time eBook Deals

Check out this month's discounted reads.

Our Summer Reading Recommendations

Red-hot romances, poolside fiction, and blockbuster picks, oh my! Start reading the hottest books of the summer.

This Month's New Releases

From heart-pounding thrillers to poignant memoirs and everything in between, check out what's new this month.

Tell us what you like and we'll recommend books you'll love.

The Homework Machine

50 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

The Homework Machine , written by acclaimed American author Dan Gutman was first published in 2007 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and is the first of a two-book series. The second book, The Return of the Homework Machine , was published in 2011. Gutman is primarily a children’s fiction writer who has been nominated for and won numerous awards, including 18 for The Homework Machine alone. Gutman is best known for his humorous series, My Weird School , in which there are more than 70 books. He lives in New York City with his family.

The paperback edition used for this study guide was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

• 7,400+ In-Depth Study Guides
• 4,950+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
• Downloadable PDFs

Plot Summary

The Homework Machine is told from the perspectives of multiple characters in the format of tape recordings for a police report.

The SuperSummary difference

• 8x more resources than SparkNotes and CliffsNotes combined
• Study Guides you won ' t find anywhere else
• 100+ new titles every month

The four main characters are fifth-grade students who are grouped at the same classroom table because their last names start with D: Sam Dawkins (Snik), Kelsey Donnelly , Judy Douglas , and Brenton Damagatchi . Other than sharing the same last initial, the students have nothing in common. Snik is the cool class smart aleck; Kelsey is laid back and doesn’t care about school; Judy is conscientious and in the gifted program; and Brenton is a loner and genius who designs software and studies psychology in his spare time. Snik pushes people’s buttons, and one day he pushes Brenton too far—implying that Brenton spends all his free time doing homework. Brenton retorts that he doesn’t spend any time doing homework and lets slip that he has invented a homework machine.

Snik calls Brenton a liar, so Brenton invites Snik, Judy, and Kelsey to his house to see for themselves. The group are stunned when Brenton’s machine prints out perfectly completed homework in Brenton’s handwriting. Brenton agrees to let Snik, Judy, and Kelsey join him after school to “do” their homework and even rewrites the software to accommodate their handwriting. The unlikely foursome spends every afternoon together, but they insist that they are not friends and that the only reason they tolerate each other is to use the homework machine, which they name Belch. Judy feels guilty about cheating but enjoys getting A’s and uses the extra time to take up ballet. Kelsey’s vastly improved grades earn her privileges, such as a belly-button piercing, from her mother. As the weeks pass, the D Squad becomes addicted to using Belch and the boundaries between their various social identities begin to blur. Snik shows an interest in “boring” chess, which Brenton plays, and Judy tries to be complimentary about Kelsey’s piercings (while finding them disgusting). Everything seems to be going well. However, things start to rapidly fall apart halfway through the year. Judy and Kelsey’s other friends resent their new associations and “unfriend” them, and their teacher, Miss Rasmussen , suspects that they are cheating.

In addition, a strange man has been stalking the group ever since Brenton designed software to instigate a hugely successful social media-driven “red socks day” that spread across America. Miss Rasmussen springs a surprise test on the class to see whether the D Squad really knows their schoolwork. Sure enough—Kelsey and Snik fail, and Judy gets a C, confirming Miss Rasmussen’s suspicions. Before Miss Rasmussen can report them, Snik’s father, who is in the military, is killed in the Middle East. This tragic event diverts Miss Rasmussen’s attention from the cheating, which seems trivial in comparison. The bond between the D Squad strengthens as the stress of keeping Belch secret increases.

Together they decide to shut Belch down, only to discover that Belch has taken on a life of its own and will not power off. They throw Belch into the Grand Canyon and feel relief as they watch it disappear. However, when backpackers find computer pieces at the bottom of the canyon, the D Squad is called into the sheriff’s office where they confess to everything. The case is closed, but their unlikely friendships continue to strengthen and grow. The stalker turns out to be someone scouting Brenton to offer him a job as an influencer for his company. The company’s clients want to market their products to kids. Brenton simply offers him an idea he would like to influence kids with: “Do your homework” (146).

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Related Titles

By Dan Gutman

The Kid Who Ran for President

Featured Collections

View Collection

Laugh-out-Loud Books

Popular Study Guides

Science & Nature

Truth & Lies

The Homework Machine

Buy from other retailers, what's this book about.

DOING HOMEWORK BECOMES A THING OF THE PAST The unlikely foursome made up of a geek, a class clown, a teacher’s pet, and a slacker – Brenton, Sam Snick, Judy and Kelsey, respectively, – are bound together by one very big secret: the homework machine. Because the machine, code named Belch, is doing their homework for them, they start spending a lot of time together, attracting a lot of attention. And attention is exactly what you don’t want when you are keeping a secret. Before long, members of the D Squad, as they are called at school are getting strange Instant Messages from a shady guy named Milner; their teacher, Miss Rasmussen, is calling private meetings with each of them and giving them pop tests that they are failing; and someone has leaked the possibility of a homework machine to the school newspaper. Just when the D Squad thinks things can’t get any more out of control, Belch becomes much more powerful than they ever imagined. Soon the kids are in a race against their own creation, and the loser could end up in jail…or worse!

What Kind of Book is .css-1msjh1x{font-style:italic;} The Homework Machine

Book lists that include this book.

The Creative Behind the Book

Dan Gutman is the New York Times bestselling author of the Genius Files series; the Baseball Card Adventure series, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies around the world; and the My Weird School series, which has sold more than 12 million copies. Thanks to his many fans who voted in their classrooms, Dan has received nineteen state book awards and ninety-two state book award nominations. He lives in New York City with his wife, Nina. You can visit him online at www.dangutman.com.

What Has Dan Gutman Said About This Book

Nothing yet! Let Dan Gutman know that you want to hear from them about their book.

More Books by Dan Gutman

Discover All the Books in the The Homework Machine Series

Other Books You Might Enjoy If You Liked This Book

Book Details

Contribute to this page.

More than halfway there—keep going!

Just the barebones.

• Help Center
• Gift a Book Club
• Beautiful Collections
• Schedule Demo

Book Platform

• Find a Book
• Motivate Reading
• Community Editors

Authors & Illustrators

• Get Your Book Reviewed
• Submit Original Work

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: $7.99 $7.99 FREE delivery: Saturday, April 13 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Buy used: $5.90

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

The Homework Machine Paperback – June 26, 2007

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Book 1 of 2 The Homework Machine
• Print length 176 pages
• Language English
• Grade level 3 - 7
• Lexile measure 680L
• Dimensions 5.13 x 0.5 x 7.63 inches
• Publisher Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Publication date June 26, 2007
• ISBN-10 9780689876790
• ISBN-13 978-0689876790
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you

Editorial Reviews

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., the homework machine, aladdin paperbacks.

Continues... Excerpted from The Homework Machine by Dan Gutman Copyright © 2007 by Dan Gutman. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0689876793
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (June 26, 2007)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780689876790
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0689876790
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 8 - 11 years, from customers
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 680L
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 3 - 7
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.84 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.13 x 0.5 x 7.63 inches
• #730 in Children's Values Books
• #1,495 in Children's School Issues
• #3,732 in Children's Friendship Books

About the author

I was born in a log cabin in Illinois and used to write by candlelight with a piece of chalk on a shovel. Oh, wait a minute. That was Abraham Lincoln.

Actually, I’m a children's book author. I’ve written more than 170 books for kids from kindergarten up to middle school.

For the little ones, I write picture books like "Rappy the Raptor," about a rapping raptor named Rappy, who raps.

For beginning readers, I write "My Weird School," about some kids who go to a school in which all the grownups are crazy. Thirty-one million copies have been sold. I also write “Wait! WHAT?” a series of biographies that focus on the unusual aspects of people like Albert Einstein, Amelia Earhart, Muhammad Ali, and Teddy Roosevelt.

For middle-graders, I write the baseball card adventure series, about a boy who has the power to travel through time using a baseball card like a time machine. He goes on adventures with players like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and others.

For advanced readers, I write "The Genius Files," "Flashback Four,” “Houdini and Me” and others.

If you’d like to find out more, visit my web site (www.dangutman.com), my Facebook fan page, and follow me on Twitter and Instagram @dangutmanbooks.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Start Selling with Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Find anything you save across the site in your account

What a Sixty-Five-Year-Old Book Teaches Us About A.I.

By David Owen

Neural networks have become shockingly good at generating natural-sounding text, on almost any subject. If I were a student, I’d be thrilled—let a chatbot write that five-page paper on Hamlet’s indecision!—but if I were a teacher I’d have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the quality of student essays is about to go through the roof. On the other, what’s the point of asking anyone to write anything anymore? Luckily for us, thoughtful people long ago anticipated the rise of artificial intelligence and wrestled with some of the thornier issues. I’m thinking in particular of Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, two farseeing writers, both now deceased, who, in 1958, published an early examination of this topic. Their book—the third in what was eventually a fifteen-part series—is “ Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine .” I first read it in third or fourth grade, very possibly as a homework assignment.

Danny Dunn, you may recall, is a “stocky and red-haired” elementary schooler. His father is dead, and he and his mother live with Professor Euclid Bullfinch, “a short, plump man with a round bald head,” who teaches at Midston University. Bullfinch “took the place of the father Danny had never known,” the book explains, and Mrs. Dunn supports herself and her son by working as his cook and housekeeper. We aren’t told how Danny’s father died—heart attack? car accident? murder?—and we know next to nothing about sleeping arrangements in the house. (“Now take your fingers out of my cake, Professor Bullfinch,” Mrs. Dunn says in the first book in the series.) But we do know that Bullfinch encourages Danny’s interest in science and lets him fool around in his private laboratory, which occupies “a long, low structure at the rear of the house.”

Danny’s best friend is Joe Pearson, “a thin, sad-looking boy”; his next-door neighbor is Irene Miller, whose father, an astronomer, also teaches at Midston. We can tell right away that Irene knows at least as much about science as Danny does—and way more than Joe, whose main academic interests are literary. As the story begins, Danny is demonstrating a recent invention of his: a piece of wood, suspended by clothesline from a pair of pulleys attached to the ceiling, into which he has inserted two pens. When he writes with either pen, the other creates a duplicate on a second sheet of paper. (This device is called a polygraph; Thomas Jefferson owned several.) “Now I can do our arithmetic homework while you’re doing our English homework,” he tells Joe. “It’ll save us about half an hour for baseball practice.” Joe runs home to get more clothesline, and Danny dreams of bigger things: “If only I could build some kind of a robot to do all our homework for us. . . .”

The boys don’t perceive a moral dilemma, but Irene does. “It—it doesn’t seem exactly honest to me,” she says. Danny disagrees, and cites his landlord: “Professor Bullfinch says that homework doesn’t have much to do with how a kid learns things at school.”

Williams and Abrashkin were all the way out at the cutting edge, technology-wise. In their first book, “ Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint ,” Danny and Bullfinch accidentally invent a liquid that causes anything coated with it to rise off the ground. That book was published in 1956, a year before the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 , but in Chapter 3 we learn that a similar satellite is already orbiting Earth, and is viewable through a telescope in Bullfinch’s lab. Long story short: the American government uses the paint on a spaceship, which accidentally lifts off while Danny, Joe, Bullfinch, and another scientist are inside it, having a look around. During their voyage, Danny completes an assignment that his teacher, Miss Arnold, has given him as punishment for daydreaming about rockets when he was supposed to be paying attention to her: writing “Space flight is a hundred years away” five hundred times.

Some of the scientific innovations portrayed in the Danny Dunn books are so advanced that they are still in the future—time travel, invisibility, smallification—but others have come into existence more or less as Williams and Abrashkin described them. In “ Danny Dunn and the Automatic House ,” published in 1965, Danny persuades the university to build what would nowadays be called a smart home ; it’s equipped with “the newest developments in electronic control systems,” including a voice-activated door lock, a Roomba-like self-propelled vacuum cleaner, and a bathtub that fills itself with water, adds soap, and announces, “Your bath is ready.” Danny’s mother is skeptical: “Once you start trying to save work by putting in machines, you may find you’re spending all your time taking care of the machines and not getting any fun out of your work. This kitchen is my studio—my laboratory, just like your laboratory, Professor. Would you want an automatic laboratory?”

Bullfinch says that he most certainly would not—but in “Homework Machine” we learn that he has built a computer with similar capabilities. It’s a scaled-down version of two mainframes that Williams and Abrashkin saw, during a visit to I.B.M., while they were researching their book. Bullfinch calls it Miniac:

A high panel at the back of the desk was filled with tiny light bulbs. There were a number of flat, square buttons, each with a colored panel above it. And beyond the desk was an oblong, gray metal cabinet, about the size of a large sideboard, with heavy electric cables leading to it.

An important difference between Miniac and the real computers of the nineteen-fifties—and another area in which Williams and Abrashkin were ahead of their time—is that its input medium is spoken English, not punched cards or paper tape. Danny asks Irene to demonstrate. She approaches the microphone and, following Bullfinch’s advice to “speak slowly and clearly so that Miniac can understand you and translate your words into electrical impulses,” says, “Um . . . John buys 20 yards of silk for thirty dollars. How much would 918 yards of silk cost him?” The professor presses a button, lights flash, and the typewriter responds: “$1,377.00.” After a pause, it adds, “And worth it.”

Any qualms that Irene has about getting help with her homework disappear when she discovers how much of it Miss Arnold assigns. One day, Irene asks Danny (at first, by shortwave radio) for help with a grammar exercise, and they meet in Bullfinch’s lab. Minny—as they now refer to the computer—defines “predicate noun” for her, and provides an example: “You are a fool .” Danny is suddenly inspired: “Why can’t we use Minny as a homework machine ?”

Bullfinch, conveniently, has asked Danny to keep an eye on Minny while he attends some important meetings in Washington, D.C. During the next few days, Danny, Irene, and Joe read large stacks of books into the microphone. As Danny explains, mainly to Joe, “Programming is telling the machine exactly what questions you want answered and how you want them answered. In order to do that right, you have to know just what sequences of operation you want the machine to go through.” When they’ve finished, Minny does their math problems for them, then starts on social studies.

“Man!” Joe says. “This is the way to do your homework. This is heaven!”

I hesitate to give away too much of the plot, but (spoiler alert!) two mean boys in their class, one of whom is jealous of Irene’s interest in Danny, watch them through a window and tattle to Miss Arnold. She comes to Danny’s house to confer with him and his mother—and you know that Danny is in trouble, because his mother suddenly starts calling him Dan. But he defends what he and his friends have been up to. Grocers and bankers now use adding machines instead of doing arithmetic the old-fashioned way, he says; why should students be different? Surprisingly, this argument works. Miss Arnold tells Danny that she wishes he wouldn’t let Minny do his homework, but that she won’t stop him.

Then the story becomes complicated. Irene tricks the jealous boy, Eddie (Snitcher) Philips, into revealing that he spied on them, then pushes him into a puddle. Eddie and his friend get revenge by sabotaging Minny. Bullfinch returns from Washington and is embarrassed when he tries to demonstrate Minny to two other scientists, one of whom is from the “Federal Research Council.” Danny saves the day by deducing that Eddie must have disconnected Minny’s temperature sensor; he reconnects it, and is treated as a hero. (This turn of events will be familiar to readers of the “Curious George” books, in which George is often praised for solving problems that he himself created.)

Bullfinch and one of the visiting scientists later program the repaired computer to write music, by giving it “full instructions for the composition of a sonata, plus information on note relationships,” and by modifying the typewriter so that it can print musical scores. Still, Bullfinch insists, Minny is limited in ways that humans are not. “It can never be the creator of music or of stories, or paintings, or ideas,” he says. “The machine can only help, as a textbook helps. It can only be a tool, as a typewriter is a tool.” He points out that Danny, in order to program Minny to do his homework, had to do the equivalent of even more homework, much of it quite advanced. (“Gosh, it—it somehow doesn’t seem fair,” Danny says.)

At least until recently, almost everyone has thought of computers in roughly that way. When Bullfinch and his friend play a sonata that Minny has written for them, Mrs. Dunn observes that “it isn’t exactly Beethoven”—and Bullfinch agrees. Yet Minny’s abilities clearly surpass those of a mere “tool.” The children “program” it by loading it with tagged examples, from which Minny somehow produces individualized schoolwork—a method that seems less like mid-twentieth-century programming than like the way that A.I. researchers create algorithms today. (Minny also editorializes , as with its comment about the price of silk and its example of a predicate noun.) Williams and Abrashkin foresaw a less serious practical use for artificial intelligence, too. “You know, we ought to enter her in one of those TV quiz shows,” Joe says in an early chapter, anticipating the “Jeopardy!” triumph, fifty-three years later, of I.B.M.’s Watson.

“Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine” is ostensibly about computers, but it also makes an argument about homework. In a note at the beginning of the book, Williams and Abrashkin write, “In all fairness to both Professor Bullfinch and Danny, we wish to point out that their position on homework is supported by Bulletin 1248-3 of the Educational Service Bureau, University of Pennsylvania.” I haven’t managed to turn up a copy of that bulletin, which was called “What About Homework?,” but I’ve found a number of other publications, from multiple decades, that arrive at what I assume are similar conclusions. For example, in 2007 the education critic Alfie Kohn—whose many books include “ The Homework Myth ,” published in 2018—wrote that “there is absolutely no evidence of any academic benefit from assigning homework in elementary or middle school,” and that in high school “the correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied.” One problem with homework is that it inevitably encourages the counterproductive over-involvement of parents. (When my kids were young, I suggested to one of their teachers that he conduct a science fair for fathers only.) There’s also the issue of homework whose sole purpose is to squeeze in material that should have been covered during the school day but wasn’t. Miss Arnold offers precisely that justification for some of her huge assignments: the size of her class has nearly doubled, because of rapid population growth in Midston, and she is no longer able to give individual students as much attention as she once did.

Miss Arnold also assigns homework for a suspect reason that’s described in a paper published under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Education, in 1988: “Punishing assignments exercise the teacher’s power to use up time at home that would otherwise be under the student’s control. The assignments often center on behavior rather than academic skills, and stress embarrassment rather than mastery.” That’s what she was up to with all those sentences she made Danny write, back in the first book in the series. Luckily for everyone, Danny handled his embarrassment with aplomb, by writing most of the sentences during downtime in outer space, and the mindlessness of the exercise did no permanent harm to his imagination. At the end of “Homework Machine”—as he, Irene, and Joe are heading to the drugstore to celebrate Minny’s resurrection—he suddenly has “a strange, wild look in his eyes, and a faraway smile on his lips.” He says, “This is just a simple idea I had. Listen—what about a teaching machine. . . .”

Irene, as always, knows better. “Grab his other arm, Joe,” she shouts. “He needs a soda—fast.” ♦

New Yorker Favorites

Searching for the cause of a catastrophic plane crash .

The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool .

Gloria Steinem’s life on the feminist frontier .

Where the Amish go on vacation .

How Colonel Sanders built his Kentucky-fried fortune .

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves ?

Fiction by Patricia Highsmith: “The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

Books & Fiction

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Cal Newport

By Helen Shaw

By Maya Binyam

By Patrick House

Margurite J. Perez

The essay writers who will write an essay for me have been in this domain for years and know the consequences that you will face if the draft is found to have plagiarism. Thus, they take notes and then put the information in their own words for the draft. To be double sure about this entire thing, your final draft is being analyzed through anti-plagiarism software, Turnitin. If any sign of plagiarism is detected, immediately the changes will be made. You can get the Turnitin report from the writer on request along with the final deliverable.

Well-planned online essay writing assistance by PenMyPaper

Writing my essays has long been a part and parcel of our lives but as we grow older, we enter the stage of drawing critical analysis of the subjects in the writings. This requires a lot of hard work, which includes extensive research to be done before you start drafting. But most of the students, nowadays, are already overburdened with academics and some of them also work part-time jobs. In such a scenario, it becomes impossible to write all the drafts on your own. The writing service by the experts of PenMyPaper can be your rescuer amidst such a situation. We will write my essay for me with ease. You need not face the trouble to write alone, rather leave it to the experts and they will do all that is required to write your essays. You will just have to sit back and relax. We are offering you unmatched service for drafting various kinds for my essays, everything on an online basis to write with. You will not even have to visit anywhere to order. Just a click and you can get the best writing service from us.

A standard essay helper is an expert we assign at no extra cost when your order is placed. Within minutes, after payment has been made, this type of writer takes on the job. A standard writer is the best option when you’re on a budget but the deadline isn’t burning. Within a couple of days, a new custom essay will be done for you from the ground up. Unique content, genuine research, spot-on APA/MLA formatting, and peerless grammar are guaranteed. Also, we’ll provide you with a free title page, bibliography, and plagiarism check. With a standard writer, you can count on a quality essay that will live up to all your expectations.

Need a personal essay writer? Try EssayBot which is your professional essay typer.

• EssayBot is an essay writing assistant powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
• Given the title and prompt, EssayBot helps you find inspirational sources, suggest and paraphrase sentences, as well as generate and complete sentences using AI.
• If your essay will run through a plagiarism checker (such as Turnitin), don’t worry. EssayBot paraphrases for you and erases plagiarism concerns.
• EssayBot now includes a citation finder that generates citations matching with your essay.

1555 Lakeside Drive, Oakland

Extra spacious rarely available courtyard facing unit at the Lakeside…

Accuracy and promptness are what you will get from our writers if you write with us. They will simply not ask you to pay but also retrieve the minute details of the entire draft and then only will ‘write an essay for me’. You can be in constant touch with us through the online customer chat on our essay writing website while we write for you.

Is essay writing service legal?

Essay writing services are legal if the company has passed a number of necessary checks and is licensed. This area is well developed and regularly monitored by serious services. If a private person offers you his help for a monetary reward, then we would recommend you to refuse his offer. A reliable essay writing service will always include terms of service on their website. The terms of use describe the clauses that customers must agree to before using a product or service. The best online essay services have large groups of authors with diverse backgrounds. They can complete any type of homework or coursework, regardless of field of study, complexity, and urgency.

When you contact the company Essayswriting, the support service immediately explains the terms of cooperation to you. You can control the work of writers at all levels, so you don't have to worry about the result. To be sure of the correctness of the choice, the site contains reviews from those people who have already used the services.

Customer Reviews

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

The Homework Machine

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

2,030 Views

16 Favorites

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by Unknown on September 5, 2012

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Customer Reviews

Finished Papers

Looking for something more advanced and urgent? Then opt-in for an advanced essay writer who’ll bring in more depth to your research and be able to fulfill the task within a limited period of time. In college, there are always assignments that are a bit more complicated and time-taking, even when it’s a common essay. Also, in search for an above-average essay writing quality, more means better, whereas content brought by a native English speaker is always a smarter choice. So, if your budget affords, go for one of the top 30 writers on our platform. The writing quality and finesse won’t disappoint you!

Premium essay writers

Essay writing help from a premium expert is something everyone has to try! It won’t be cheap but money isn’t the reason why students in the U.S. seek the services of premium writers. The main reason is that the writing quality premium writers produce is figuratively out of this world. An admission essay, for example, from a premium writer will definitely get you into any college despite the toughness of the competition. Coursework, for example, written by premium essay writers will help you secure a positive course grade and foster your GPA.

Advocate Educational Integrity

Our service exists to help you grow as a student, and not to cheat your academic institution. We suggest you use our work as a study aid and not as finalized material. Order a personalized assignment to study from.

When you write an essay for me, how can I use it?

• Words to pages
• Pages to words

Finished Papers

Writing my essay with the top-notch writers!

The writers you are supposed to hire for your cheap essay writer service are accomplished writers. First of all, all of them are highly skilled professionals and have higher academic degrees like Masters and PhDs. Secondly, all the writers have work experience of more than 5 years in this domain of academic writing. They are responsible for

• Omitting any sign of plagiarism
• Formatting the draft
• Delivering order before the allocated deadline

Finished Papers

Professional Essay Writer at Your Disposal!

Quality over quantity is a motto we at Essay Service support. We might not have as many paper writers as any other legitimate essay writer service, but our team is the cream-of-the-crop. On top of that, we hire writers based on their degrees, allowing us to expand the overall field speciality depth! Having this variation allows clients to buy essay and order any assignment that they could need from our fast paper writing service; just be sure to select the best person for your job!

Online Essay Writing Service to Reach Academic Success.

Are you looking for the best essay writing service to help you with meeting your academic goals? You are lucky because your search has ended. is a place where all students get exactly what they need: customized academic papers written by experts with vast knowledge in all fields of study. All of our writers are dedicated to their job and do their best to produce all types of academic papers of superior quality. We have experts even in very specific fields of study, so you will definitely find a writer who can manage your order.

260 King Street, San Francisco

Updated Courtyard facing Unit at the Beacon! This newly remodeled…

Customer Reviews

Allene W. Leflore