Teachers & Writers Collaborative

The Alphabet of the Trees is a superb collection of essays about teaching all aspects and forms of nature writing, including field journals, poems, fiction, and nonfiction. The distinguished contributors to this volume include Gary Snyder, Joseph Bruchac, Mary Oliver, Clare Walker Leslie, Barbara Bash, William J. Higginson, and Jack Collom. Their essays present inspiring models from Tu Fu, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov, Basho, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda, Muriel Rukeyser, and many others.

ISBN 0-915924-63-3

The Art of Science Writing features innovative advice about science writing, as well as inspiring examples from Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Jane Goodall, Stephen Jay Gould, and others. Topics covered include: essay development; writing experiments; and an annotated bibliography with more than 150 books useful in the teaching of this unique genre.
“What a treasure this ‘how to do it’ book is!”—American Biology Teacher

ISBN 0-915924-20-X

Novelist Tom Disch joined forces with illustrator Dave Morice to create a series of cartoons that enliven and demystify the complex world of grammar. Disch¹s playful poems lead us to see anew rules long forgotten or never fully understood, while Morice¹s comic treatments flesh out the dry, chalky terrain of pronouns, tenses, infinitives, and prepositions.
“This delightful book rhymes grammar into delightful reasonableness.”—John Hollander

ISBN 0874518504

In Like It Was, Cynthia Stokes Brown (a recipient of the American Book Award) offers clear, helpful advice on every step of the oral history process: using the tape recorder; conducting and transcribing the interview; editing the manuscript; writing from multiple narratives; and presenting the results. Like It Was brings personal involvement to the study of history and provides a solid structure for the practice of writing.
“A solid, well-organized introduction, covering everything.”—Booklist

ISBN 0-915924-12-9

Herbert Kohl invites teachers to explore improvisation and dramatic dialogues with their students and provides strategies for transforming young writers into playwrights. He also offers methods for adapting great works of literature into classroom performances.
“[Kohl] writes with humor, sensitivity, and dedication to the challenge of making a children’s theater that exists for the sake of the children who are part of it.”—Harvard University’s Portfolio

ISBN 0-915924-17-X

Playmaking is an award-winning, step-by-step account of teaching children to write, direct, and perform their own plays—as staged readings, videotapes, radio plays, and full stage productions. An exciting guide for cultivating the dramatic imagination, the book includes lesson plans, an annotated bibliography, and a glossary of theater terms.
“I love this book. It’s a great read, and it taught me a lot about playwriting, theater, and young people.”—Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides

ISBN 0-915924-35-8

The Story in History gives teachers and students of all levels an entirely new way to learn about American history: by re-experiencing it from the vantage point of the imaginative writer. In more than 20 exercises using sources as various as early maps of the Americas, Walt Whitman’s accounts of the Civil War, Sioux oral histories, diaries of the women on the Oregon Trail, ads in 1940s, issues of Life, and poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks and Pablo Neruda, students combine research, imagination, and personal memory to explore both the “big events” and everyday life of earlier times.
“This is a book that could make a difference.”—Kliatt
“A ground-breaking book.”—St. Paul Pioneer Press

ISBN 0-915924-39-0

This anthology of essays about the challenges and rewards of uniting visual art and creative writing not only demonstrates how art can spark wonderful student writing, but goes much further, offering novel insights into the creative process. The 20 essays in Third Mind—by teachers, poets, writers, artists, and museum educators—provide ideas on a diverse array of artistic disciplines, among them, quilt-making, Chinese calligraphy, abstract painting, and photographic portraiture. The collection also features 18 gorgeous color plates and an extensive bibliography of works on visual art and creative writing.

ISBN 0-915924-94-3