Beloved writer Peter Quartermain is one of Canada's best-kept literary secrets. He has dedicated his life to the study of poetry and poetics, and to teaching, drawing together poets and thinkers in English from both sides of the Atlantic. But where did he start? In Growing Dumb, his "Boy's Own" autobiography of an education, he shows us a curious and spirited boy schooled in England during the Second World War, discovering the world beyond his family, and coping with an educational system so mired in tradition that it was anachronistic even in his time. Quartermain shows us an enchanting and fascinating world, in which a boy with a lively mind is determined to find his own way into the future.