Monday, September 27, 2010

Tuesday Trivia

  1. Which author entered the University of Montpellier to study for a doctorate in medicine, but was expelled because he had previously been an apothecary?
  2. Whose memoirs, penned by Mark Twain, were an instant success and one of the best selling books of the 19th century — famously sold by former Union soldiers in full uniform?
  3. What do Laura Ingalls Wilder, Kenneth Grahame, Richard Adams, The Marquis de Sade, and Raymond Chandler have in common?
  4. Below are the given names of authors who generally publish under his or (her) first initials. What are the last names of these authors?

  • Thomas Stearns
  • Edward Estlin
  • Henry Louis
  • Herbert George
  • Clive Staples
  • John Ronald Reuel
  • Alan Alexander
  • David Herbert
  • Elwy Brooks
  • Edgar Lawrence
  • Edward Morgan
  • Ernst Theodor Amadeus
  • Gilbert Keith
  • Howard Phillips
  • Pelham Grenville
  • Robert Lawrence
  • Susan Eloise
  • Terence Hanbury
  • William Edward Burghardt
  • Wystan Hugh




Which author served as the Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence at Harvard 1998-2006?


Seamus Heaney





Which author uses all of the following pseudonyms: Deanna Dwyer, K. R. Dwyer, Aaron Wolfe, David Axton, Brian Coffey, John Hill, Leigh Nichols, Owen West, Richard Paige, Leonard Chris, and Anthony North?




Dean Koontz





Which author suffered from Pott’s disease — a form of tuberculosis affecting the bone that severely stunted his growth to a mere 4’ 6” tall with a severe hunchback?



Alexander Pope





Who coined the phrases "the great unwashed" and "pursuit of the almighty dollar"?




Edward Bulwer-Lytton of “It was a dark and stormy night” fame also coined these phrases.






Which writer’s common-law wife was the madam of a Jacksonville brothel

called the Hotel de Dream?



Stephen Crane




Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Tuesday Trivia


  1. Which author served as the Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence at Harvard 1998-2006?
  2. Which author uses all of the following pseudonyms: Deanna Dwyer, K. R. Dwyer, Aaron Wolfe, David Axton, Brian Coffey, John Hill, Leigh Nichols, Owen West, Richard Paige, Leonard Chris, and Anthony North?
  3. Which author suffered from Pott’s Disease — a form of tuberculosis affecting the bone that severely stunted his growth to a mere 4’ 6” tall with a severe hunchback?
  4. Who coined the phrases "the great unwashed" and "pursuit of the almighty dollar"?
  5. Which writer’s common-law wife was the madam of a Jacksonville brothel
  6. called the Hotel de Dream?


Arguably the world's bestselling author, who published over 20 books which were translated into 32 languages and sold over 750 million copies?


With an unverified worldwide sales record of 750 million, Harold Robbins supposedly has sold more books that J.K. Rowling, making him the world leader.



Which author was described by teachers as “unable and unwilling to learn," and left university to run up heavy gambling debts before starting his writing career?


Leo Tolstoy



Which author was not allowed to watch movies and television by his devout born-again Christian parents — a restriction that lead to his early interest in reading?


Ken Follett



Which contemporary, award winning author is married to a man nicknamed Pancho?


Stephanie Meyers



Which author suffered from bipolar disorder, on which he commented in a letter to his wife was like "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life."



Graham Greene




Monday, September 20, 2010

Mark Twain Speaks “From the Grave”

by Douglas Grudzina

Is there anything you have to reveal that is so ... um ... delicate ... that it can’t be revealed until after your death? One hundred years after your death?

Apparently Mark Twain did.

In the preface to his “autobiography” (never yet a complete and coherent compilation of the 5,000 pages of notes he’d dictated to a stenographer during the last four years of his life), Mark Twain wrote that he was speaking “from the grave rather than with [his] living tongue.” He did so because “when a man is writing a book dealing with the privacies of his life—a book which is to be read while he is still alive—he shrinks from speaking his whole frank mind.” He ends this preface emphasizing, “It seemed to me that I could be as frank and free and unembarrassed as a love letter if I knew that what I was writing could be exposed to no eye until I was dead, unaware, and indifferent.”

So ... one has to wonder what “privacies” Twain did not want exposed before he was “unaware and indifferent.”

What could have been on the beloved writer’s “whole frank mind” that he didn’t dare utter while he was still drawing breath?

Continuing in his preface, Twain issues a series of instructions to ensure that this work will not be read while he is alive. He instructs his “editors, heirs & assigns” to “leave out of the first edition all characterization of friends and enemies that might wound the feelings of either the person characterized or their families & kinship.” He also expresses a desire that “all sound & sane expressions of opinion ... be kept out. There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait & see.”

How could Twain’s characterization of friends “wound the feelings of either the person[s] characterized or their families”?

What “sound and sane expressions of opinion” might Twain’s contemporaries not want to hear?

The “century from now” reference is reinforced by Twain’s vision of his autobiography’s being published in four or five editions, “issued twenty-five years apart” and each more complete than the previous ones, until “into the fourth—or at least the fifth—the whole Autobiography can go, unexpurgated.”

Do the math: assuming the first edition is released upon Twain’s death, the fourth—the unexpurgated edition—would be ready “a century from [then].”

Still later, on the cover page of the manuscript (the title Autobiography of Mark Twain is typed), is another note (handwritten) to Twain’s “heirs and assigns.” This note includes—along with other instructions intended to protect the feelings and reputations of then-living persons whom Twain apparently “fries” in his work—this mandate: “It will be noticed that I have marked certain chapters which are to be kept suppressed, sealed up, and unprinted for a hundred years. These must not be shown to any one, but kept sealed—as I shall leave them.”

Suppressed, Sealed up, and Unprinted ...

Sounds apocalyptic.

It’s the stuff of myth and legend: the hundred-year-old prophecy, the Volume of Arcane Knowledge ...

Well, guess what? That hundred years has passed.

Twain died in April 1910. In November 2010, the University of California, Berkley, which was bequeathed all of Twain’s papers by his daughter in 1962, will release Volume 1 of a three-volume, unexpurgated autobiography of Mark Twain.

Those who have had the chance to glimpse the manuscript or see advance copies of the volume say it is a doozie—definitely worth the century-long wait.

Maybe we’ll finally learn what happened to Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, and the Lindbergh baby.

Or what Melville’s puzzling “Ah, Bartleby! Ah Humanity!” is supposed to mean.

Now, there is an Autobiography of Mark Twain running around, edited by Charles Neider. It seems to appear in three incarnations: Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2000, Harper and Row 1959 (then titled The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Including Chapters Now Published for the First Time), and Harper and Brothers 1917.

There’s also Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography, the Chapters from The North American Review (University of Wisconsin Press 1990). “The Chapters from The North American Review” refers to twenty-five chapters Twain himself had serialized in that periodical in 1906 – 1907.

Of course, these autobiographies do not include the “suppressed, sealed up, and unprinted” chapters that the forthcoming Berkeley publication will contain.

Volume 1 is scheduled for release on November 15.

Are you as excited as I am?

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Prestwick House Holds Successful Summer Institute on Instruction and Assessment


“I was rejuvenated! I wanted to read literature again. I bought six books to read during this two-week period.”
- J.D.

“This summer institute was awesome and one I would gladly recommend to any teacher.”
- M. P.

“Thank you for your personal feedback on the assignments—I found it thought-provoking and helpful. I appreciated being treated as a professional.”
- J. D. (different from the one above)


From Monday, June 28, through Friday, July 9 (with a day off for Independence Day), four teachers from a variety of Delaware school districts visited Prestwick House Corporate Headquarters in Smyrna for the first annual Prestwick House Summer Institute on Instruction and Assessment. During the course of this forty-hour inservice program these dedicated teachers read (fiction and nonfiction), wrote multiple-choice and essay questions, wrote essays in response to other participants’ questions, and rewrote, revised, and reexamined many of their “tried and true” classroom practices to see whether there might be ways to make their instruction more “intentional”—more pointed toward the knowledge and skills of the English language arts discipline than simply a collection of trivial facts about a few specific stories, novels, and plays.

For their effort, participants received forty of the ninety course-hours required for recertification in Delaware.

Each day was exhausting—luckily the corporate honchos at Prestwick House were generous with the coffee, muffins, ice cream sandwiches, potato chips …—but each day was also exhilarating. As the above quoteables testify (the fourth participant, R. T., used her comments section to give us a really neat idea for next year), a grand time was had by all.

I know I had a great time pretending I was back in the classroom—this time teaching students who actually had some background and were interested in what was being taught! (And I did not have to take papers home every night to grade.)

We’ll be doing it again next year (specific dates to be announced). If you’re a Delaware teacher, we’ll be able to offer you the same forty hours we certified for this year’s teachers. If you’re nearby but not in Delaware, we can’t (yet) offer you inservice or recertification credits, but we can maybe get Jason to buy us ice cream again.

But you’ll want to respond quickly when you receive your notification. This year, every participant advised us to keep the Institute small to allow for personal interaction and feedback.

So, have a great school year, and maybe we’ll see you in the Café this summer.









Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Tuesday Trivia

  1. Arguably the world's bestselling author, who has published over 20 books which were translated into 32 languages and sold over 750 million copies worldwide?
  2. Which author was described by teachers as “unable and unwilling to learn," and left university to run up heavy gambling debts before starting his writing career?
  3. Which author was not allowed to watch movies and television by his devout born-again Christian parents — a restriction that lead to his early interest in reading?
  4. Which contemporary, award-winning author is married to a man nicknamed Pancho?
  5. Which author suffered from bipolar disorder, on which he commented in a letter to his wife was like "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life?"

J.K. Rowling’s short story, “The Tale of Three Brothers” is based on which famous tale?

“The Pardoner’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer in Canterbury Tales.


The moons of Uranus are named after characters from the works of which two famous writers?


Alexander Pope and William Shakespeare.

While in grammar school, which famous African American writer was elected class poet at his Lincoln, IL school?


Langston Hughes was named class poet, stating in retrospect he thought it was because of the stereotype that African Americans have rhythm rather than any budding poetic talents.


Which American writer, along with Leon Mendez Solomons, performed experiments on Normal Motor Automatism — a phenomenon hypothesized to occur in people when their attention is divided between two activities, like writing and speaking?


While at Radcliffe College, Gertrude Stein was part of experiments that demonstrated the theory of “stream of conciousness.” Later in 1934, behavioral psychologist, B.F. Skinner would interpreted Stein's notoriously difficult poem, Tender Buttons, as an example of the "normal motor automatism" Stein had written about for the experiment at Radcliffe.


Which author completed a four-year apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant before choosing to become a writer?


Vaclav Havel


Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Celebrate International Literacy Day!


Thanks to Maupin House's blog, we here at Prestwick House can join in celebrating International Literacy Day! Read an excerpt from the Maupin House blog below, or click here to read the full story.


Celebrate International Literacy Day!

In 1965, the United Nations declared September 8 International Literacy Day. For the past 45 years, International Literacy Day has aimed to emphasize the importance of literacy to communities, societies and cultures around the world!

Illiteracy is not something that occurs only in far away continents and countries. It could be affecting someone in your community. According to the International Reading Association, an estimated 780 million adults do not know how to read or write. The IRA also estimates that 94-115 million children worldwide don’t have access to education. International Literacy Day is just one of the ways we can strive to increase literacy around the world!

Not sure how you can get involved? Here are some fun, easy ways to celebrate the day:

  • Have your children or students write short stories about their favorite books or story characters. Allow them to create their own illustrations to go along! Then have them present their short stories out loud.
  • Organize a reading circle with your class or children, where everyone takes a turn reading part of a story.
  • Take a trip to the library and pick out some new reading material for your class, your kids, or yourself!
  • Volunteer at a local library or after-school program. Read and write stories with the children there!
  • Are your kids too old for some of the books in the house? Are you tired of the same books you’ve had for years? Donate them! You can take them to schools, hospitals, nursing homes, churches-anywhere! One man’s trash is another man’s literary treasure.

And most importantly, spread the word! Raising awareness of International Literacy Day is easy and powerful. Send out an e-mail or write a newsletter or short article telling about the day and why it is important. And let your students or children know how lucky they are to have the tools that teach them to read and write. The more people who know about International Literacy Day, the closer we are to helping the people it affects.

Now go do your part, and enjoy the day!

Cool New Website Function — Online Catalogues!



As many of you have already noticed, PrestwickHouse.com is sporting a brand new button. Visit our Online Catalogue Page today to browse the full 2010 Fall Update Catalogue right from our website! With convenient, safe ordering directly from our online catalogue, you'll love this new way to shop. Starting with the Fall Update 2010, each new catalogue will be available in this easy to navigate, clickable format.





How to Use the Prestwick House's Online Catalogue


Use the toolbar at the top left of the Online Catalogue to:






Choose your preferred reading format: one page at a time or traditional spreads.




Zoom in on specific products and click on any item in the catalogue for more information or to add it to your cart.






Navigate using the helpful thumbnail index or simply browse the catalogue page by page with easy 3-D page turning.





Print one page or the whole catalogue with the touch of a button.



Email a copy of a catalogue to a friend.




Add this catalogue to your computer's favorites.




Share this catalogue on Social Networking Sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.





Use the toolbar at the top left of the Online Catalogue to keep track of the items in your shopping cart, shop PrestwickHouse.com by category, view your account, or check out at any time directly from the catalogue.




Keep Your Eyes on Your Mailboxes: New Fall Update Catalogues Are Here!


Over $200.00 in Money-Saving Coupons Plus a FREE Shipping Code!

Yours hasn't arrived yet? Get your first look at it with our new interactive online catalogue!

If you're looking for a catalogue that's absolutely bursting at the seams with great deals, then you're in luck! It's time for our Fall Update Catalogue featuring all of our newest products alongside your favorite tried and true programs. Check your mailbox today for some of the deepest discounts offered anywhere on our most popular products, including:

  • FREE Shipping Code for Online Orders Over $50.00.
  • $10.00 off Complete Teacher’s Kits.
  • 25% off new Literary Touchstone Teacher’s Editions.
  • Safeguard Binding hardback editions for only $5.00 per copy.
  • $50.00 off Vocabulary Power Plus for the New SAT Complete Packages.
  • Free Presentations with any Vocabulary from Latin and Greek Roots complete package.
  • $20.00 off already discounted Three Simple Truths and Six Essential Traits class sets.
  • $50.00 off new Rhetoric, Logic, & Argumentation class sets.

Browse Our New, Interactive Online Catalogue Today!

Visit our Online Catalogue Page today to browse the full 2010 Fall Update right from our website! With convenient, safe ordering directly from our online catalogue, you'll love this new way to shop.


New! Common Core Standards Boxes Indentify Key Skills


In conjunction with the release of the final draft of the Common Standards Initiative’s Core Common Standards, we have added helpful boxes throughout the catalogue to aid you in identifying which key skills each products covers.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Tuesday Trivia

  1. J.K. Rowling’s short story, “The Tale of Three Brothers” is based on which famous tale?
  2. The moons of Uranus are named after characters from the works of which two famous writers?
  3. While in grammar school, which famous African American writer was elected class poet at his Lincoln, IL school?
  4. Which American writer, along with Leon Mendez Solomons, performed experiments on Normal Motor Automatism — a phenomenon hypothesized to occur in people when their attention is divided between two activities, like writing and speaking?
  5. Which author completed a four-year apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant before choosing to become a writer?
Last Week's Answers

  • Filled his/her pockets with rocks and went swimming — Virginia Woolf
  • Stuck his/her head in a gas oven — Sylvia Plath
  • Mauled by a pack of wild dogs owned by Archelaus, the King of Macedonia — Euripides
  • Stabbed in the head over his right eye in a fight about a bar tab Christopher Marlowe
  • Trapped in a fire while a patient in an asylum for the mentally ill — Zelda Fitzgerald
  • Killed by doctors during a "blood letting" attempt to cure malarial fever.Lord Byron
  • Froze to death at a railway station after giving away his/her entire fortuneLeo Tolstoy
  • Shot with a .22 rifle by an insane dishwasherMaxwell Bodenheim
  • Killed self by drinking disinfectantVachel Lindsay
  • Suffered an abdominal hemorrhage at his/her mother’s home in St. Petersburg, Florida, while watching "The Galloping Gourmet" Jack Kerouac
  • Fell off a bar stool during a bout of heavy drinkingLionel Johnson
  • Died from complications of peritonitis in his/her colon after ingesting a toothpick along with a hors d’oeuvre at a cocktail partySherwood Anderson
  • Cut wrists and wrote a final poem in his/her own blood titled "Goodbye my friend"Sergei Esenin
  • While en route to New York aboard the S.S. Orizaba, he/she leapt into the Caribbean Sea; reputedly said "Good-bye everybody" Hart Crane
  • Run over by laundry truck outside the College de France Roland Barthes

Friday, September 3, 2010

Do You Keep Plants in Your Classroom?

Recently, one of my favorite bloggers, Larry Ferlazzo, posed a question about keeping a bit of greenery in your classroom. According to his recent post:

Over the years, I’ve made a few feeble attempts at keeping plants in my classroom. Students seemed to like it, but the few times I had them I took them out at the end of the year and just forgot to bring them back.

An article I just read about, though, is making me wonder if I should make having them more of a priority, and I’d be interested in hearing feedback.

Jonah Lehrer writes in The Psychology of Nature about some studies on the effect of nature on increasing attention and working memory. In fact, one study showed a positive effect on just looking at a nature picture. He suggests that “it’s a good idea to build a little greenery into our life.”

I’m going to make a more serious attempt at bringing “a little greenery” into my classroom this year.

Do you have plants in your classroom? If so, why? If not, why not? If you have plants, do you believe it has an effect on students?
This got me thinking. I enjoy having plants in my own home, but are there really benefits to keeping them in the classroom? Teachervision.com thinks that:

Caring for live plants can give your classroom a warm, comforting feel. It can also help teach students responsibility – and science! Local nurseries or greenhouses may even be willing to donate the plants to your class.

Similarly, according to an article by usask.com, having a bit of plantlife in your classroom seems to have a variety of positive effects:

“Over the last 10 to 15 years a lot of research has shown that indoor plants not only beautify indoor spaces, they also make them a healthier and more productive place to live in. The results of Dr. B.C. Wolverton's research on air purifying benefits of indoor plants, sponsored by NASA and the Landscape Contractors of America, have been widely reported in both print and broadcast media. Wolverton has shown that plants such as the Bamboo Palm and Madonna Lillies can reduce the level of airborne toxins such as benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene….Virginia Lohr has conducted test which show that plants can improve the humidity inside buildings by up to 20 percent. A lot of work has also been done by researchers such as Ulrich and Simons to show that people feel better about an indoor space with greenery than they do about one without. People were shown to be more relaxed, which can improve productivity, reduce stress, and reduce blood pressure.”
What do you think? Do plants in the classroom have a positive effect on you or your students? For more ideas regarding plants in your classroom, visit KidsGardening.com's Teacher Page.


Image courtesy of kidsgardening.com.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Wordle

Below is a "wordle" that was made using words from the Prestwick Café Blog. Wordle.net allows you to type in text or a URL, and then takes all the words used in that writing to create "word clouds."
According to Wordle.net, "The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends." As you can see, our word cloud shows our emphasis on "students," "books," "writing," and "teachers" — all the things that are most important to us!



Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Save the Words!




According to SaveTheWords.org, "over the centuries many words have come and sadly gone." Save the Words offers your students a chance to "adopt a word" by becoming familiar with a handful of words from bygone eras and adopting any that they deem worth saving. It also shows students how to "increase their word power" using dictionaries, find old words in their everyday life, and appreciate the richness of a well-developed vocabulary. Visit today to adopt your favorite old word!