Retired teacher and novelist Leland Hall, who writes under the pen name Eldot, believes contemporary adolescence suffers from constant digital noise and a lack of quiet self-discovery. His acclaimed Julian's Private Scrapbook series, set in the pre-cell phone 1960s, uses humor and tenderness to capture the messy beauty of growing up. Hall suggests today's digital world rarely allows young people the time to think and discover themselves that his characters experience.
Hall deliberately chose comedy as his medium, stating that fun and frolic lead to self-discovery. He explains that in his work, the reader shares the experience rather than observing it, and the message is discovered, not delivered. The books follow Julian and his friends through comic misadventures, awkward crushes, and small moral crossroads that shape identity. Hall positions his work within an American literary tradition of using humor to explore youth, citing Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as predecessors.
The five-part series—comprising Barr's Meadow, The Poker Club, The Shooting Gallery, Thunder and Lightning, and The Champions—portrays adolescence with candor and compassion, intended for mature readers. Hall emphasizes the stories are about understanding universal experiences like curiosity, embarrassment, and affection, not about scandal. He advocates for discussing these topics honestly and providing necessary counsel.
Hall initially adopted the pseudonym Eldot, a phonetic spelling of "L.," as a safeguard when he released his first novel, Barr's Meadow, in 2011, as the subject matter was then considered taboo. He states he used it not to hide but to protect former colleagues from being blamed for his approach and to prevent media sensationalism from distorting his intent. Now, he speaks publicly under both names, arguing that while historical taboos have been co-opted by smartphones and the internet, the current problem is too much exposure with too little understanding.
Hall's background as a high school English and Drama teacher informs his mission to educate through laughter. He criticizes the tendency to tell young people they will "grow out of" their struggles, warning that this mindset risks losing them. His goal is to help readers—teenagers, parents, and adults—replace judgment with patience, laughter, and love, asserting that ignoring reality endangers youth while understanding and humor serve as real safeguards.
The Julian's Private Scrapbook series addresses early experiences of attraction, confusion, and curiosity with unflinching candor, framed as literature. Hall maintains that the specificity of these experiences gives the books their purpose, addressing human struggles as urgent today as they were sixty years ago. The stories aim to entertain, enlighten, and motivate readers to rediscover their own passage from innocence to understanding. More information about the series can be found at https://www.EldotBooks.com, and the books are also available for purchase on https://www.amazon.com.
