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Try: http://members.aye.net/~harmon/
Move over, Harry Potter.
Make room for Harmon Bidwell, a fictitious Hoosier orphan from Lanesville who is the brainchild of IU Southeast alumnus Neil Brewer, a real-life sixth grade teacher from Elizabeth. In an on-line saga called "Harmon's Letters," Brewer has constructed Harmon Bidwell's adventures, beginning in the summer of 1916, when Harmon sets off on a cross-country adventure astride a beat-up motorcycle called Sir Davi. Teachers throughout the state have been firing the imaginations of their students using the curriculum Brewer has conceived to promote reading; they learn about windmills, groundwater conservation, rock collecting, Indiana animals, lunar eclipses and the Indianapolis 500, among other things, and use the letters as springboards for other activities. In the spring, students and teachers can meet the 101-year-old Harmon (aka Brewer) when he arrives, either by biplane or riding Sir Davi, at a farm in Lanesville for a day-long field trip. Brewer (at left, in costume) was the only Hoosier teacher to win the 1996 Christa McAuliffe Fellowship, a $35,000 grant, which allowed him to create more adventures and a Web site for the project.
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