Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for August 05, 2014

I feel the same way about knowledge, wisdom and intelligence. Unfortunately, school usually doesn’t dispense any of that.

She’s being a snobby pretentious brat!And it has nothing to do with kids wanting to excel in studies! This character is just a big fat head of ANNOYING! Give me Jason Fox or Susie Derkins any day!

When I was a wee lad, I spent part of my summer vacation at my granparents farm where there was no electricity or indoor plumbing. But they had this BIG marvelous book – The Book of Knowledge. I loved that book and spent hours reading by the light of a “Hurricane Lamp”. (Think Lincoln). Probably the best text book I ever had! Wish I could find a copy of it now.

I wonder whether those who are so irritated by Gracie’s (apparent) lack of humility are equally bothered by other types of arrogant characters….every character ever played by Tom Cruise, for instance. BTW, I find that being a show-off is very common among children. They generally grow out of it.

Agreed Gracie.

brat/bræt/ Show Spelled [brat]noun a child, especially an annoying, spoiled, or impolite child (usually used in contempt or irritation). Yeah. That sums her up for me.

From all of the above comments, one can form the opinion that we are living in a society that no longer respects knowledge or wisdom. In our country today, it seems that fame is the only thing that people are seeking. The abuse of privilege gained by athletic ability, wealth, or even appearance is excused no matter how immoral the offense. However, if someone shows any intellectual ability or interest, they are looked down upon or dismissed as unimportant. Gracie is special in that she loves knowledge for knowledge’s sake, not for what it can gain her.

Also, look at the friendship between these two. Nora does not understand Gracie’s desire to learn, but that does not prevent her from being a good friend. Gracie accepts the fact that Nora is not as driven to pursue knowledge as she is,but does not look down upon her friend.

Shame that her behaviour neither show off any wisdom, while she may have some intellect in getting knowledge.

You could almost be talking about me. But what you don’t understand is that her home life was probably hell. Mine was. There was no one to teach me how to act or how to be a friend. My actions were all reactions to what I perceived was going on around me. It took lots of psychiatric therapy to get past it all. Looking back, I have nothing but disgust for all those classmates who didn’t understand and didn’t give me a chance. Home was hell, but school was worse. Be careful about judging people by how they act. You can’t know their hell.

I honestly don’t see an issue with Gracie. She is just explaining that she loves school and prefers the intellectual pursuits. It is only mean/overbearing/pretentious if she intends to hurt her friend, or make her friend feel bad. I haven’t seen anything about her character that would suggest that. All of you who are complaining about her actions, would you still be compalining if she used “if loving knowledge is wrong, I don’t want to be right?” She is reading a thesaurus and how often do you get to use cool words like “erroneous”.

Of course it does. We are all accountable for our actions. That’s why I went into therapy. I tried not to pass on my problems to my kids.