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The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl to be Released by Random House, Tuesday, March 17, 2009

by Douglas Grudzina

Charles Dickens, arguably the best-known author in the English language, died on June 9, 1870. The evening before, mere hours before he collapsed with a stroke, he completed the sixth installment of what was to be a twelve-installment novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He left no notes, no outline, no preliminary drafts of the remaining six installments. He confided his plans regarding how he intended to end his mystery to no one.

He did offer to reveal the ending to Queen Victoria, but she declined.

The first five installments had already been published; the sixth would be in print soon; and readers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean were clamoring to know what had happened to the missing Edwin Drood. Had his uncle, the opium-addicted choirmaster killed him out of jealousy? Had he placed himself in hiding to avoid an unwanted marriage?

No one knew, and literary pirates and plagiarists were more than willing to provide answers and realize hefty profits from “the Chief’s” death.

This is the background against which Matthew Pearl’s third novel, The Last Dickens, is set. Trying to save his business and solve the brutal murder of one of his employees, Dickens’s American publisher travels to England in search of any clue to the “authentic” end of Dickens’s last work. The search takes him deep into London’s underbelly, the world Dickens exposed so graphically in so many of his novels, and the world which he himself was rumored to have explored in his final year while creating his final work.

The Last Dickens comes out in hard cover on Tuesday, March 17. It’s a great read, and I’d recommend it to my students for a number of reasons. First of all, there’s a hard-to-put-it-down story of murder, theft, and intrigue; and characters so vividly drawn that sometimes you want to hug them, and sometimes you want to slap them. Then there’s the rich view of the nineteenth-century world that Pearl’s exhaustive and impeccable research provide. Your students will love scenes of Dickens’s fans lining up days before tickets go on sale for the Christmas Eve reading of A Christmas Carol—almost as if Dickens were the Grateful Dead of his day (which, of course, he was.) There’s the almost-brutally-honest view of Dickens the man, who left his family with so many debts that they had to auction off almost all of their possessions to stay out of prison, who was rumored to have had affairs with two of his wife’s sisters, who’d separated from his wife and taken a much-younger mistress in an age that prided itself on propriety and prudery. And there’s the insider’s view of the publishing world, much more cut-throat than cultural.

To accompany the planned 2010 release of the paperback edition of The Last Dickens, Pearl has prepared a new edition of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which presents a wealth of possibilities to teachers who really want their students to get into the mind of the author. How did Dickens intend to end this book?

Matthew Pearl’s first novel, The Dante Club, is available from our catalogue and on our web site, as is his edition of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation of The Inferno by Dante Alighieri, which lies at the heart of that blood-chilling serial-murder mystery.

And again, The Last Dickens will be available Tuesday, March 17th. It's well worth your taking a look at.

Prestwick House Launches a New Line of E-Books for “National Read an E-Book Week!”

In conjunction with the release of the 2^nd generation of Amazon Kindle and “National Read an E-book Week,” Prestwick House has created a new line of e-books based on their best-selling Literary Touchstone Classic Editions. In recent years, Prestwick House has become a celebrated e-book vendor in the educational field, selling many of their products in convenient, downloadable form.

Although it is still a relatively new concept, e-books are becoming more widely accepted in schools throughout the country, and Prestwick House is doing their part by making sure that all of their most popular Touchstone titles are available to e-book readers via Amazon.com. E-book readers such as the new Kindle 2 are now equipped with new capabilities like taking in-book notes, looking up words in an online dictionary, and viewing web content with new web browser capabilities — making the future of education seems closer than ever.

In the educational arena, digital books pose a variety of benefits. Teachers can:

• Save time and money by downloading e-books immediately and avoiding shipping costs
  
• Create in-book notes for specific classes Display e-books on overheads or Smartboards
  
• Allow students to look up background information directly from the web as they read
  
• Access their entire library for easy, in-class reference
  
• Keep digital files such as class syllabi, online articles, blogs, course packets, and teacher's editions handy

For Prestwick House, creating e-books from their existing line of literary classics is just a first step in the process of joining the e-book community. In the future, Prestwick House plans to create more dynamic products specifically tailored to the e-book arena including elements like a clickable table of contents, more interactivity for use with whiteboards, and creating interrelated bundles of e-books.

Click here to view all of the e-books from Prestwick House’s Literary Touchstone Collection now available at Amazon.com.

Now Over 300 Teaching Units Available from Prestwick House!

With over 300 Teaching Units available from Prestwick House, it's easy to teach all of your favorite titles in your classroom!

Prestwick House Teaching Units are the ultimate tool to get students thinking critically about literature. Each unit contains a title-specific list of objectives to ensure that by the end of the unit, students have gone beyond basic comprehension to master the book's critical elements.

Also Available in Downloadable Format!
Need a Teaching Unit in a hurry or just want to save on shipping? All of our Teaching Units are available in Downloadable Format from PrestwickHouse.com!

Free Technology for Teachers – Vocabulary Power Plus Now Available on Quizlet.com!

It's not always easy to make sure students retain vocabulary after the test, and high school student Andrew Sutherland was fed up with the same old ineffective methods of memorization. That's why in 2005, at age fifteen, Sutherland began Quizlet.com, an online resource that includes fun, interesting, and effective ways to help students like him retain vocabulary.

This website allows students or teachers to type in vocabulary words and definitions, which are then available in a variety of applications. Students are able to “Familiarize” with a simple flashcard application; “Learn” by typing in the correct word when the definition is shown; “Test,” or fill in the answers on a typical vocabulary test; and play fun games called “Scatter” and “Space Race” in order to help them learn vocabulary in a new, creative way.

FREE! Ready-To-Use Online Tests, Flashcards, and Games at Quizlet.com

If you are using Vocabulary Power Plus for the New SAT books in your classroom, Quizlet applications make a great in-class activity, homework assignment, extra credit assignment, or Smartboard skill builder drill.

To use Quizlet in your classroom, view our complete list of links to all Vocabulary Power Plus Books available on Quizlet in the article section of our website.

Top 25 Best-Selling Paperback Books of 2008

Visit the Article Section our website to view the list of the Top 25 Best-Selling Paperbacks of 2008.

Click on any of them to find Teaching Units, AP Teaching Units, Response Journals, Activity Packs, Multiple Critical Perspectives Units, Complete Teacher's Kits, and more!

"Friend" Prestwick House for a Chance to Win!

If you're already using (or plan to join) the NCTE 2008 Ning or Facebook, add us as a friend and you will be automatically entered to win a free Complete Teacher's Kit on any title of your choice!

Social networking sites like Facebok, MySapce, and Twitter are exploding onto the scene, and many teachers have alread discovered the usefulness of these web-based tools. Prestwick House wants to help you make the most of these social networking sites by bringing you the latest news on our newest products, free, ready-to-use lessons, and special discounts, tips, tricks, and techniques for your classroom.

How to Add Us on Facebook
If you don't have one, create a Facebook account here. Once you've logged in using your username and password, follow this link to the Prestwick House Facebook Page and click the "Become a Fan" button at the top right.



How to Add Us on NCTE Ning
If you don't have one, create an NCTE 2008 Ning account here. Once you've logged in using your username and password, follow this link to the Prestwick House Ning Page and click the "Add as Friend" button below our logo at the top left.

Free Lesson From Prestwick House!

Each month, Prestwick House shares one of our customer’s favorite lessons for free. Every lesson is ready-to-use right from one of our most popular books for our newsletter subscribers. We’re committed to providing teachers with the highest-quality teaching materials that are both ready-to-use and educationally sound.

This month's lesson comes from Writing an A+ Research Paper, and contains both the student and teacher pages for a Lesson in Paraphrasing.

Please feel free to share lessons with all your colleagues. We hope that they find these classroom-proven lessons to be as useful as you do. You can find a complete list of free lessons that will be updated each month in the article section of our website or subscribe to our monthly Footnotes Newsletter and receive more free lessons, special discounts, and product updates right in your inbox!

Grammar Doesn’t Have to Be Boring — Why We Think the Descriptivists Have the Right Idea

Recently our New Product Development Specialist, Douglas Grudzina, shared an article with me that seems to make a lot of sense. In this month’s English Journal (January, 2009), the article entitled “The Grammar Gallimaufry: Teaching Students to Challenge the Grammar Gods” has quite a bit to say on the way grammar is taught.

Author Jeff House begins by explaining the difference between the “prescriptive” and “descriptive” approaches to teaching grammar. Prescriptivists tend to think of grammar as a static set of rules, and are often very strict in upholding them. Descriptivists, on the other hand, believe that grammar is more a means to an end and spend time looking at the rationalizations behind the grammar rather than ignoring the changing nature of language.

“The ‘rules’ of grammar are really nothing more than a strong consensus among educated speakers and writers,” agrees Grudzina. “The descriptivist realizes that communication depends on the sender and the receiver, and the sender must be sensitive to the receiver’s frame of reference.”

Currently, the prescriptive approach tends to be the norm for most students and teachers. House agrees, saying, “…the dominance of grammar drills, rote memorization, and heavy markdowns for ‘incorrect’ grammar suggest how much prescriptive thinking dominates the classroom. This is particularly ironic in that every English teacher knows that literature abounds with comma splices, run-ons, fragments, split infinitives, dangling modifiers, and other ‘errors’ we sometimes legislate against.”

House also quotes linguist Edward Sapir, who wisely tells us that, “‘All grammars leak,’ which is why teaching grammar as a firm set of rules invites trouble.” Like House and Grudzina, Sapir believes that “The endpoint of grammar instruction is not the rules; the endpoint is using grammar to clarify expression. … [O]ne learns grammar not to test one’s memorization skills but to learn how to lay out the nuances of thought.” Thus, the descriptivist encourages his students to “acknowledge grammar’s inconsistencies,” while the prescriptivist perpetuates the student frustration of “relearning rules depending on who the teacher is this year.”

While many teachers agree that there are, in fact, flaws in the prescriptive approach, they, like Jeff House, lament the fact that it is difficult to find a book that teaches grammar any other way. We at Prestwick House wanted to fill this void with a book that understands that, “…grammar is about expression, not memorization.” And thus, Grammar for Writing was born.

“Even before I saw this article, I chose the descriptive approach for Grammar for Writing largely because it is the only approach that makes sense to me,” says Grudzina, a twenty-five-year veteran of the high school English language arts classroom. “We know that language is dynamic. Words enter and leave the language every generation. Words change in meaning. Slang words work their way into acceptable speech. New inventions and procedures require the creation of new words and expressions. Creative writes coin new phrases or use words in new ways and eventually these also become commonplace — like the current practice of verbizing a noun or adjective.”

“Grammar for Writing starts from the very first lesson identifying “units of thought” and manipulating them so that the student learns how to convey something meaningful to his/her reader. The end result is that, yes, the student will capitalize the first word of every sentence and end every sentence with a period, but which do you think is easier to understand, remember, and apply: make sure you capitalize and punctuate; or make sure you signal to your reader when you are ending one thought and beginning the next?”

“This book is different because it has the kids play around with words, phrases, and clauses — arranging and rearranging them to see how different configurations mean different things. From their exercises, they then ­infer­ the convention rather than having the rule imposed on them.”

Since Grammar for Writing came out, we’ve been seeing more and more teachers stepping up as descriptivists, and it’s fantastic to see this theory confirmed in an academic publication like the English Journal. We stand behind this approach as the most effective method for getting students to really understand grammar and not just regurgitate the answers that we demand. If this is an approach that you’d like to try out, feel free to call us to request a sample of Grammar for Writing.

How Are You Spending Your Snow Day?

Special thanks to Jim Farrell, a high school teacher in Eastern Connecticut, for mentioning our Literary Touchstone Edition of Macbeth in his blog post What's a Teacher Do on a Snow Day?.