GARN PRESS 2018 BOOK CATALOG
GREAT BOOKS AND GREAT READING EXPERIENCES
BOOKS • THE HISTORY OF •
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INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IN U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS GADFLY ON THE WALL: A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER SPEAKS OUT ON RACISM AND REFORM PLAYHOUSE: OPTIMISTIC STORIES OF REAL HOPE FOR FAMILIES WITH LITTLE CHILDREN TRUMPLANDIA UNITED WE STAND TEACHING WITHOUT TESTING TOODLE-OO RUBY BLUE
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GARN PRESS BOOK CATALOG 2018-2019 GREAT BOOKS AND GREAT READING EXPERIENCES WELCOME TO GARN PRESS At Garn we promise to continue publishing great books and providing great reading opportunities for readers that encourage all of us to be brave, be fearless, and not forget to imagine the extraordinary opportunities of being human in these most challenging times.
At Garn we wish you great books and great reading experiences. Remain brave, be fearless, and don’t forget to have fun in these most challenging of times.
At Garn Press “HOPE” has come to mean Opportunity and Possibility in times of Emergency. “Where’s the hope?” we constantly ask. How does this book inspire positive action?
ACTIONABLE KNOWLEDGE The task is to imagine the future so we can re-imagine the present, and ask what actionable knowledge do we need to change the future now?
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Put your trust in the people – Garn’s mission is to provide writers and readers with opportunities to engage with each other in new and original ways
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TRUST
GREAT BOOKS
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HOPE
GARN PRESS 2018-2019 GARN PRESS At Garn Press we are convinced that all those who work for the common good in the caring professions must be supported at all costs. This is not an ideological stance – it is simply a matter of human survival. Essentially Garn’s task is to support a new generation of thinkers who are using the power of science and social experience to stand up for human rights and to participate in the struggle for a future in which Earth is a child safe zone.
Dear Garn Readers, Garn Press publishes award-winning nonfiction that explores compelling ideas and arguments based on primary research and investigative reporting ignored by mainstream media. We’re actively supporting writers of conscience who offer original research based perspectives on the most pressing issues of our day including: climate change, inequality, privatization of public education, children with special needs, gun violence, death and dying, cancer (love, loss, and survival), and many other critical factors jeopardizing social, economic, and environmental sustainability. In addition to books Garn press is publishing articles by many renowned educators, artists, and scientists. But at Garn we do not consider this enough. We’re also committed to nurturing the imagination and human spirit by publishing great novels and poetry. Garn’s award winning novelists and poets share this ideal, and all the fiction books published by Garn – whether mysteries, fantasies, or historical novels -- are written not only to entertain, but also to raise serious questions about time, memory and whether what we see – in life as well as in the mirror – is what is really what is occurring. There’s much more, of course. The Garn Press website. It is content-rich and we publish new and original content on a daily basis, not only about Garn authors and books, but also world news articles, editorials, and commentaries. We’re conducting Author Interviews and producing videos, audios, print interviews and readings by every author, and posting them on the Garn Press website. And, we’re featuring World News Commentary -- editorials and articles that are not filtered as they are in the mainstream media. At Garn we promise to continue publishing great books and providing great reading opportunities for readers that encourage all of us to be brave, be fearless, and not forget to imagine the extraordinary opportunities of being human in these most challenging times. We hope the books we publish will in some small way contribute to changing and saving the world. Looking forward to meeting you in the pages of a Garn Press book. They make great presents!
THE WISDOM AND WIT OF DIANE RAVITCH
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Diane Ravitch Diane Ravitch is a lightning rod in American Society. She is a fearless defender of public education as the foundation stone of democracy. In this unique collection of her most important writings, Diane Ravitch provides remarkable insights into her seminal thinking on public education, and on the dangers to democracy of treating parents as consumers, students as products, and teachers as compliant followers of commercial scripts. Diane’s unwavering support of public education has made her a national treasure. Public school teachers love her. In The Wisdom and Wit of Diane Ravitch Diane shines a light on their courage and endurance. She inspires them. But through her writing she also strikes fear into the hearts of all those – oligarchs, politicians, hedge fund financiers, and corporate reformers – who are intent on dismantling public schools and turning them into corporate money makers.
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-A-MILLION; INDIGO BOOKS, INDIEBOUND, MORE
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Essentially, Diane has a most extraordinary talent for encouraging readers to inhabit what's happening in the texts that she is writing. We stand beside her and take up the challenge of resisting, persisting, and pushing down the risks to children whose public schools are in jeopardy and who are growing up in a democracy that is in peril. Her goal is to bring hope to all those educators who have been disrespected by plutocrats. In these writings, she does exactly that.
THE HISTORY OF INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IN U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Susan DuFresne In The History of Institutional Racism in U.S. Public Schools Susan DuFresne shakes us to our foundation with the historically accurate images she has created on the three fifteen foot panels, which Garn Press has transformed into a book that is destined to unite hearts and minds in the struggle for equity and justice for all children in America’s public schools. “I felt the weight of historical injustice on my brush as I depicted the findings of my research,” Susan DuFresne explains. “But I also felt the tugging of my brush to depict the fight for justice, which is also there throughout history. Teachers especially have always been courageous in their resistance to racism and oppression, and I wanted to share this history to inspire others through the images I was painting to take up that truth and join the resistance movement to end institutional racism in public schools.”
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-AMILLION; INDIGO BOOKS,
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This is a book of hope as well as condemnation. The emphasis is on restorative justice and reconciliation. The graphic depictions of the history of racism and discrimination unite the struggles of resistance movements – including Black Lives Matter and the Badass Teachers Association. It is a call for the re-Imagining of public schools as places of racial justice that welcome every child in a society that recognizes the nation has an ethical responsibility to honor the civil rights of children and ensures that each child has the very finest education U.S. public schools can provide.
GADFLY ON THE WALL: A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER SPEAKS OUT ON RACISM AND REFORM
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Steven Singer Talk, talk, talk. There’s an awful lot of talk about public education in America today. Have you ever wondered if even half of it is true? For example, have you ever wondered if our public schools are really failing or if they might actually be some of the best in the world? Have you ever wondered if “School Choice” was actually about giving someone else more options and reducing freedom for you and your children? Ever wondered about the relationship between standardized testing and Nazi eugenics? How about if teachers unions should be doing more to fight for students’ civil rights? And now that we’re talking about it, why do white people sometimes snicker at black names? And how can you protect your children from toxic testing? Why does Common Core still exist? What’s it mean to be racist in America today? And why do the rich need racists?
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-A-MILLION; INDIGO BOOKS, INDIEBOUND, MORE
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If so, then you’re cordially invited on a fantastic journey where few have gone before: into the mind of a public school teacher. Become a fly on the wall in our public school system. See what few non-professionals have seen before. It’s an eyeopening experience guaranteed to ruffle a few feathers, but you’ve been warned: this is the work of a gadfly.
PLAYHOUSE: OPTIMISTIC STORIES OF REAL HOPE FOR FAMILIES WITH LITTLE CHILDREN
Available November on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Monica Taylor Pete Seeger once said: “The key to the future of the world is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.� In many ways, a book about at Playhouse, a cooperative preschool founded in 1951, is in fact an optimistic story that has the potential to inspire others, early childhood teachers and parents alike, to search for, create, or contribute to progressive learning environments for their own children and students. Playhouse serves as more than just a school for children. It is a learning community for parents, where they can learn and embrace progressive models of education. Parents and early childhood teachers need to educate themselves about the tenets of democratic and progressive schooling, and there is very little written for them. Early childhood teachers often graduate with certification but are unsure of how to implement a progressive pedagogy in their classrooms or how even to find schools where these types of practices are encouraged.
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With the Core Curriculum Standards and their aligned standardized tests dictating the curriculum and teaching in public schools, parents and early childhood educators need a platform to innovate schools for their children / students. This optimistic telling serves as a reminder for us all that even in this tumultuous storm of standards and testing, progressive preschools with deep commitments to social justice exist, are thriving, and are available.
Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
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UNITED WE STAND DIVIDED WE FALL: OPPOSING TRUMP’S AGENDA – ESSAYS ON PROTEST AND RESISTANCE
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
17 Essay Contributions In United We Stand Divided We Fall Garn Press has gathered together essays by great scientists, scholars and renowned teachers who oppose the direction in which President Trump is leading the country. These are essays, to quote George Lakoff, which frame American values accurately and systemically day after day, telling truths by American majority moral values. Keep in mind as your read and write in the margins of the book that you are actively engaged in responding to the very particular ways in which the writers and those they write about see the world. As James Baldwin said in his debate with William Buckley at the University of Cambridge in 1965, our response to questions that are “hideously loaded” depend in effect on “where you find yourself in the world, what your sense of reality is, what your system of reality is. That is, it depends on assumptions, which we hold so deeply so as to be scarcely aware of them.”
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Stepping into this arena to engage the public in ways that might, quite possibly, shine a light on assumptions that have been hidden or camouflaged for many years are the scientists, scholars and teachers who have contributed to United We Stand, Divided We Fall: Opposing Trump’s Agenda – Essays on Protest and Resistance.
TRUMPLANDIA: UNMASKING POST-TRUTH AMERICA
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, coming soon.
P.L. Thomas In unprecedented times when American values are at stake P.L. Thomas provides a moral compass for so many people who expected the first woman to become President of the United States. Thomas argues that this assumption grossly underestimated the rise of Donald Trump, which was an inevitable culmination of who the U.S. truly is as a people. In a series of brilliantly written essays Trumplandia: Unmasking Post-Truth America examines how a reality TV star as president represents post-truth America as a failed democracy and as a country still deeply poisoned by racism, classism, sexism, and xenophobia. Running throughout as well is an implicit question: How can we resist Trumplandia and truly become a democracy?
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-AMILLION; INDIGO BOOKS,
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
FIRST DO NO HARM: PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION IN A TIME OF EXISTENTIAL RISK
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Steve Nelson First Do No Harm: Progressive Education in a Time of Existential Risk develops a comprehensive argument for the importance of progressive education in light of the world’s increasingly severe challenges. Current educational practices, particularly in the United States, instill conformity and compliance at a time when authority must be challenged, skepticism must thrive and our students must be imaginative, creative, empathic and passionately alive. The book traces the origins of progressive education and cites the rich history and inarguable science behind progressive practices. Nelson argues that a traditional or conventional approach to education has dominated as a matter of political expediency, not good practice. The book provides an unsparing critique of current policy and practice, particularly the excesses of contemporary education reform.
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-AMILLION; INDIGO BOOKS,
Using anecdotes from his many years as an educational leader, he makes the case in an engaging, colorful and accessible style. In the final chapter, Nelson offers a Bill of Educational Rights, hoping teachers, parents and all citizens will demand a more joyful, constructive and loving education for the children in their care.
Nominated for the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
DEVIL KNOWS
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
David Joseph Kolb Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a finalist in the USA Best Book Awards, Devil Knows is a mystery-inthe-archives thriller written with great charm and cinematic flair. In the dead of night at the height of the 1692 Salem mania, a dying smallpox victim collapses in prison while visiting a witch condemned to hang – Mary Bradbury, the great ancestor of famed writer Ray Bradbury. A delirious old man, Hopestill Foster, is brought before the Rev. Cotton Mather, the infamous witchhunter and the most powerful man in ancient Boston, for a very private interrogation. Mather is desperate for answers about Foster’s past because he knows it ties into his own. Better had he not asked. Over the course of the prisoner telling his story to the cleric, 60 years of a terrible history unfolds, at the heart of which is a monstrous secret about Mather’s family that must not be allowed to escape the room where Foster is being held.
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-AMILLION; INDIGO BOOKS, Nominated for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. Honored as a finalist in the 2015 USA Best Book Awards in the “Fiction: Fantasy" category.
Devil Knows is a thrilling historical adventure in the grand storytelling tradition of Northwest Passage and Drums Along the Mohawk, breaks new literary ground about the very first American century – a nearly forgotten post-Pilgrim past when intolerance, misogyny and ignorance culminated in horrifying outrages against ordinary people. Yet it rediscovers, too, that hope was never lost, and that heroes were always among us.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
Hopestill Foster, the novel’s protagonist, a man inured to a lifetime of suffering and one to whom a great wrong was done by him and to him in his youth, ultimately has to decide. Pass on, leaving the wreckage of his life behind, or accept a final deadly mission to make things right. For Hopestill Foster, there is only one choice.
ROSIE’S UMBRELLA
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Denny Taylor James Paul Gee writes: "Rosie's Umbrella is a gripping, page-turning, wild ride, fuelled by great passion, deep humanity, and an urgent call for justice." “She died within seconds of falling,” Rosie’s Umbrella begins in 1955. “She could see the shadows that went with the echoes of screams from up above, but the patterns of light and the fading sounds were nothing more than that. There was not time to think about them, to name them or to say, ‘There’s lovely’, but that is how she felt in those last moments of her life as she fell down the old mine shaft.” Living a life of privilege in Boston in 1995, Rosie Llewelyn knows nothing about Wales or coal mining or about the child who fell down an old mine shaft. She should, because the death of the child, so many years ago, will change her life forever. Driven by her unconditional love for her aunt who suddenly falls apart, Rosie is determined to find out about her family, and in a life and death struggle that fuses past and present she discovers her own truth in a heroic journey of self-discovery.
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-AMILLION; INDIGO BOOKS, MORE 2015 USA Best Book Awards – Finalist in the “Best Cover Design - Fiction” category.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
BLOODY LANE
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Martin Lee & Matthew Fleury “A slow-building murder tale, but the complicated hero and serpentine wrap-up make it a worthy mystery.” - Kirkus Review Felix Allaben is a haunted man. Haunted by the memory of his wife, gunned down in a mugging gone awry. Haunted by his responsibilities as a single father of a teenage girl. And, as Bloody Lane opens, haunted by the murder of Curtis Gwynn, an ex-cop whom Allaben had known when both served in the Baltimore Police Department. Gwynn is found dressed in the uniform of a Civil War reenactor on the hallowed grounds of the Antietam battlefield—shot through the head.
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-AMILLION; INDIGO BOOKS, MORE 2016 USA BEST BOOK AWARDS: Honored as a "Finalist" in the "Fiction: Mystery/Suspense" category.
Allaben is a special investigator with the Department of Justice. He has been summoned by a shadowy official in Washington to get to the bottom of the crime. Working in tandem with the local sheriff, Felix weaves his way through a maze of leads, lies, and dead ends in his effort to make sense of this first death and of others that unexpectedly follow. In so doing, he comes up against an armed, active, neo-Confederate hate group operating out of a local gun club and bent on domestic terrorism. The suspects are many. Among them are an unstable realtor with whom Gwynn was having an affair; her alcoholic, hot-headed husband; their son, a Civil War enthusiast who’s been upset by the unsavory lifestyles of his parents; her brother, a rising politician, and a retired Navy contractor, as well as other members of the aforementioned militia. Bloody Lane is set in and around Frederick, Maryland, a small city with an intriguing past. The infamous Civil War battle of Antietam, fought nearby, yielded the single bloodiest day in American history. The conclusion is both violent and unsettling.
Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
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THE EDUCATOR AND THE OLIGARCH
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Anthony Cody Can a teacher challenge the wealthiest man in the world? This is the question Garn Press asked in 2014 when Anthony Cody’s The Educator And The Oligarch was first published. The answer is a resounding “Yes!” Anthony Cody not only challenged Bill Gates, but also received the 2015 NCTE George Orwell Award, which recognizes writers who have made outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse, and the 2015 eLIT Silver Medal Award in the education/ academic/ teaching category. In recognition of the importance of Anthony’s steadfast resistance to Gates’ unacceptable manipulation of public education policies, Garn Press published a new edition of The Educator And The Oligarch with a new preface by Anthony, which is available in paperback and eBook formats, and for the first time, as a hardcover book.
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-AMILLION; INDIGO BOOKS, MORE Winner of 2015 NCTE George Orwell Award. Winner of the 2015 eLit Silver Medal Award in the "Education/ Academic/Teaching" category.
The Educator And The Oligarch is a book for parents and teachers, and a must read indictment of big money public school reform for all politicians, policy makers, and public officials.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
Based on indisputable scientific research evidence, in The Educator And The Oligarch, Anthony Cody makes the case that the chosen path of Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation’s datadriven reform, centered on high stakes tests, educational technology and market-based competition between schools, threatens great harm to public education.
EVERY LEAST SPARROW
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Carolyn Walker Every Least Sparrow is simultaneously heartbreaking and delightful in revealing the story of Jennifer Walker, a girl born with RubinsteinTaybi syndrome, a rare and confounding condition that affects mental and physical development. Nearly every one of Jennifer’s body functions is adversely affected by this disorder, creating enormous challenges. Rubinstein-Taybi, however, cannot lay claim to Jennifer’s spirit, or her mother’s determination that her daughter live a full and happy life. With the support of Jennifer’s father and siblings, and devoted pediatrician, they set forth on a quest to find the “normal” that every child deserves, and every parent hopes for. Their quest takes them f ro m f e a r t h ro u g h d e s p e ra t i o n , t o t r u e enlightenment -- a profound understanding of what it means to be human. Ultimately, all involved, and especially the mother, realize the gifts of Rubinstein-Taybi: enduring love, and even envy for the accepting and joyous life that is Jennifer’s.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
SPLIT SECOND SOLUTION: BOOK ONE
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Denny Taylor Split Second Solution is a modern fable, a magical love story that is both strangely mysterious and terrifying real. It’s 2022. Word and X-it, both born in 2000, have been hunted since Word’s mother was murdered in 2008. They’re stuck in the Split Second between life and death when they land on the doorstep of a strange old crone. Along with Word and X-it you’ll meet Et, a creature from another galaxy who often appears as the old crone, and Death who likes to appear as Cat, Bat, Kiss, Gaga, and Bowie. Also in the story are Aisha and Jamaal, who are graffiti artists being hunted by Sick-Reapers and A-I – artificial intelligence hostile to biological intelligence – running amok in New York City. Their survival depends on Death splitting time to save Word from the Sick Reapers who are searching for the mysterious box Word’s mother gave her just before she died.
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-AMILLION; INDIGO BOOKS,
The magic of the Split Second Solution is that science and myth are combined to tell the truth. Word is the Last Truth Keeper, and by reading the story we just might save the world!
Nominated for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize and the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
BLACK INKED PEARL: A GIRL’S QUEST
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Ruth Finnegan 2016 National Indie Excellence Awards (NIEA) finalist in the in the Visionary Fiction category. “Blurring the lines between poetry and prose, dreams and reality,” Kirkus states, Black Inked Pearl is “a mythical story of two lovers whose connection transcends space and time.” An epic romance about the naïve Irish girl Kate and her mysterious lover, whom she rejects in panic and then spends her life seeking. After the opening rejection, Kate recalls her Irish upbringing, and her convent education, before her tsunami-like realisation beside an African river of the emotions she had concealed from herself and that she passionately and consumingly loved the man she had rejected. Searching for him she visits the kingdom of beasts, the heavenly archives, Eden, and hell, where at agonizing cost she saves her dying love. They walk together toward heaven, but at the gates he walks past leaving her behind in the dust.
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On a secret back way to heaven guided by a little beetle, Kate repeatedly saves her still scornful love, but at the very last, despite Kate's fatal inability with numbers and through an ultimate sacrifice, he saves her from the precipice and they reach heaven. Kate finally realizes that although her quest for her love was not in vain, in the end she had to find herself – the unexpected pearl.
2016 USA Best Book Awards: finalist in the “Fiction: Visionary” category. 2016 National Indie Excellence Awards (NIEA): finalist in the in the "Visionary Fiction" category.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
5-13: A MEMOIR OF LOVE, LOSS AND SURVIVAL
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Nancy Rankie Shelton In 5-13: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Survival, the realities of sharing life and death exemplify what it means to live and to love and will resonate with readers. By March, Jack is strong enough to return home to Maryland with Nancy, where he continues treatment while they try to pick up the pieces of their lives. He survives three more emergency admissions to the hospital, but the stays are much shorter and he experiences more outpatient than inpatient care. Though Jack is able to return to work, Nancy is not – she spends her time and energy supporting Jack’s efforts to heal and providing care and encouragement for him. Jack’s health continues to fail. On June 9th he dies. Cancer is not the sum total of their lives or this memoir. Reflections of the 35 years they were together are woven throughout the narrative. Jack’s childhood, their first date, the birth of their only child, their relationships with others that shaped both their personalities are all part of their story. Nancy’s identity as a wife, mother (and mother-in-law), sister, daughter and friend are all part of the experience.
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In 5-13: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Survival Nancy Rankie Shelton encourages readers to overcome their fears of cancer, remain steadfast and loving, survive the death of a loved one, and continue living. 5-13 is a brave love story beautifully written.
2016 USA BEST BOOK AWARDS: Honored as a "Winner" in the "Health: Death & Dying" category. Nominated for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
TOODLEOO RUBY BLUE!
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Denny Taylor Toodle-oo is a touching story about two little girls – Ruby Blue and Lilly Wu – saying goodbye to each other. Part poem, part song – the words rhyme as Ruby Blue and Lilly Wu remember playing together: Toodle-oo Ruby Blue! I had fun playing with you. I was really worried when I saw your tiger – But it was very funny when you tried to hide her!
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Destined to be a beloved classic, Toodle-oo is highly predictable and easy to read. Both children and adults already love it.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
In the vibrant illustrations the tiger is a small soft toy that grows to be a larger than life real tiger, which almost leaps from the page in Rachel Backshall's brilliant illustrations.
A PARENT’S GUIDE TO PUBLIC EDUCATION
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Russ Walsh What is a parent to make of the current narrative about public education in the United States? We hear that our public schools are mediocre at best and dysfunctional and unsafe at worst. We hear politicians and pundits arguing that the country will fall behind economic competitors like China and Japan, if our schools do not improve. We hear education reformers, well-funded by corporate lions like Bill Gates and the Walton family, suggesting a smorgasbord of solutions from school choice to more rigorous standards and from increased standardized tests to test-based teacher accountability. What is education reform and how will it impact schools, children and parents? What are charter schools and should I send my child to one? What is the impact of standardized testing on my child? Should I opt my child out of standardized testing? What does good reading and writing instruction look like?
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A Parent’s Guide to Public Education in the 21st Century is written to answer these questions and help today’s parents sort through the weeds of educational reform to make informed decisions designed to get the best possible education for their children. The book starts from the point of view that public education is a vital institution, central to our democracy and economic independence, and then suggests ways that parents can not only get the best of education for their own children, but also support policies that will make the institution of public education stronger for future generations.
YOU’RE NOT DEAD: THE MIDNIGHT BOOKS VOLUME ONE
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more.
Geoff Ward Do you like the spookiness of Stephen King’s horror fiction? The wit and weirdness of Neil Gaiman's fantasy writing? Are you a fan of UK writer David Mitchell's new gothic novel Slade House, or reading Tim Powers’ new mystery novel about the secret life of Los Angeles, Medusa’s Web? Maybe you tune in to the new Netflix sci-fi fantasy Stranger Than - or perhaps you prefer to tune into that old box set of David Lynch’ s Twin Peaks. If you want to read a new, first novel of the uncanny and the deeply unsettlingly strange that has a little of all those, but is very much its own world, try You’re Not Dead by Geoff Ward. John Ashbery, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet writes, “Geoff Ward's glitteringly funny and scary novel sends his hero Miles on a wild pursuit, through this world and the next, of one of only three known copies of the rarest book in existence. Like the object of his obsessive quest, You’re Not Dead is both supreme fiction and grail, a one-off exemplar of a lost original.”
AMAZON; BARNES & NOBLE; WATERSTONES; BOOKS-AMILLION; INDIGO BOOKS, MORE 2016 USA BEST BOOK AWARDS: Honored as a "Finalist" in the "Fiction: Fantasy" category.
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Garn Press. www.garnpress.com
Readers agree with John Ashbery, as JAG writes on Amazon, You’re Not Dead is “Fantastic! This is a fabulous blues/noir novel! The author clearly went to midnight crossroads returning with a crazily brilliant mix of magic, blues, bibliomania and noir fiction. As if Robert Leroy Johnson and Thomas de Quincey have collaborated on a heady and savage twenty-first century transatlantic campus novel. Pure mental! When will volume two be out? Can't wait.”
RAISING PEACEMAKERS
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Esther Sokolov Fine Raising Peacemakers by Esther Sokolov Fine tells a twenty-two year story of kids growing up with peacemaking as their foundation. At Downtown Alternative School (DAS), a small public elementary school in Toronto, child-to-child conflicts were understood as opportunities. Children and adults worked hard to create a warm inclusive community where differing viewpoints and disagreements could be handled fairly and safely. While the book includes documentation and transcripts, it’s a narrative rather than an academic text. It’s the author’s story and many stories. It’s a trail of re-thinking, negotiating and re-negotiating, solving and re-solving (occasionally resolving) teaching and learning dilemmas. It’s a tale of one school’s brave and optimistic effort to create and sustain healthy, safe, equitable, and academically relevant conditions for and with people whose lives were and are at stake in public education. It’s about children and adults growing together as they discover more about what it means (and what it takes) to become responsible citizens who care about each other, about their community, and about the world.
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Between their many inevitable conflicts, encouraged by adults, DAS children established their own rituals. They would double-cross their arms and clasp fingers in a group handshake to mark the conclusion of “a peacemaking.” They would wipe away tears, giggle, move on to other things, or resume their play. They were learning to express themselves, listen, and include. The adults learned to hold back, hover, and accept what for the children constituted resolution, even when they (the adults) did not always fully get it.
NEGOTIATING A PERMEABLE CURRICULM
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, IndieBound, more. Anne Haas Dyson & Bobbie Kabuto
Vivian Vasquez writes: “This book should be in the hands of every teacher! I love the seamless way in which past (Anne’s original text) and present (Bobbie’s story of her son) combine to create powerful thinking and promote courageous teaching that places children at the center.” Negotiating a Permeable Curriculum: On Literacy, Diversity, and the Interplay of Children’s and Teacher’s Worlds is part of the Garn Press Women Scholars Series. Originally printed in 1993 in the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Concept Paper Series, Negotiating a Permeable Curriculum revisits Dyson’s powerful concept of a permeable curriculum, a socially constructed learning space created by teachers and children.
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Negotiating a Permeable Curriculum is a timeless piece as it is relevant to current moves in education with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). In 2010, the CCSS were released as a set of standards devised to create national benchmarks of student knowledge and skills in literacy and math. While not specifically mentioning curriculum, the CCSS explicitly outlines what should be taught from kindergarten to grade 12 and, therefore, it has had a major impact on establishing a national curriculum and assessment system led by private, corporate companies.
FLUSH: THE EXAGGERATED MEMOIR
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Rick Meyer When fourth grade ends, Ricky is on his own for the summer because his parents have jobs and his sisters are, well, they’re sisters so he’s not interested in them. The summer begins on a high note as he begins gathering items left at people’s curbsides, things like lawn mowers, baby strollers, old lamps, and appliances. His plans to build a vehicle go well, and then he starts building a robot. But his plans are interrupted as he rides around the neighborhood one morning and gets jumped by Mike. Mike beats up Ricky, leaving him bloody and his bike in ruins. Fearing his father’s reaction to the wrecked bike and his mother’s reaction to his torn and bloody clothing, Ricky hides both and secretly works on repairing his bike.
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His relationship with his father is confusing for Ricky as he tries to please him but just cannot seem to do so. Ricky’s father is equally confused by their relationship. The summer meanders through other adventures, including a recurring nightmare in which Ricky, a skinny kid, is flushed down the toilet. Catastrophe follows disaster as Ricky works to keep his summer secrets from his parents, fearing they will get a babysitter to keep watch over him if they know some of the many things that have been going on.
2016 USA BEST BOOK AWARDS: Honored as a "Finalist" in the "Children's Fiction" category.
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RAT-A-TATTAT! I’VE LOST MY CAT!
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Denny Taylor Rat-a-tat-tat! I’ve Lost My Cat! by Denny Taylor is a picture storybook that is great fun for children learning to read. It is a lovable lost cats mystery with happily mixed-up families and friends. The paintings of the charismatic characters and the irresistible cats are bold and brilliantly painted by the acclaimed conceptual artist, Shelton Walsmith. When read aloud the story hums, and the rhythm of the highly predictable text makes it easy and joyful for children to read. At Garn Press we consider it the ultimate antidote to the developmentally inappropriate Common Core and the potentially damaging high stakes tests that are being administered to little children. Rat-a-tat-tat! I’ve Lost My Cat! is a light hearted pleasure that will make learning to read a moment to treasure in children’s young lives. We expect there will be some children who will want to keep the book forever.
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PREPARING THE NATION’S TEACHERS TO TEACH READING
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Curt Dudley-Marling Anthony Cody writes: Curt Dudley-Marling’s highly readable book makes it clear that NCTQ is pursuing an ideological agenda hostile to teacher education, and friendly to the test-driven reforms of the past decade. Curt Dudley-Marling offers a spirited defense of the work of university-based teacher educators to prepare the nation’s teachers to teach reading. He provides a damning analysis of reports by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), which claim that teacher educators are doing a poor job of preparing teachers to teach reading. He also details the theory and research that support the meaning-based approach to reading advocated by many university-based reading educators. He concludes that the ultimate goal of many educational reform groups like NCTQ is to undercut public support for traditional public schools to pave the way for free market-based schooling based on competition and profit, where literacy is a commodity to be exchanged in the marketplace and individuals are mere cogs in an economic machine.
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WHAT’S WHOLE IN WHOLE LANGUAGE IN THE 21ST CENTURY?
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Ken Goodman What’s Whole in Whole Language in the 21st Century? includes a new introduction by Ken Goodman, commentary by Michael Rosen, and excerpts from a series of never published interviews conducted in 1992-1993 by Denny Taylor of renowned reading scholars who knew Ken and Yetta Goodman, and who spoke freely about their lives together as well as their research and teaching. The insights of these scholars, who include Frank Smith and Jeanne Chall, are profound. They shift the political discourse of reading research and teaching young children to read. Ousting the propaganda, they shed light on what really happened to progressive educators and whole language teachers at the end of the 20th century.
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There has never been a more critical time for teachers to read What’s Whole in Whole Language in the 21st Century? It is as prescient today as it was when Goodman first wrote it.
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The original version of Goodman’s best-selling book sold two hundred and fifty thousand copies, became a worldwide phenomenon, and was translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese. It became the handbook for the revolution for equality and justice for all children that occurred in classrooms around the world. Teachers were inspired to put aside commercial materials that were based on very limited understandings of reading and writing, and instead placed children and their very natural curiosity about language and learning at the center of classroom activity.
THE CHILDREN OF SANDY HOOK VS. THE U.S. CONGRESS AND GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA
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Denny Taylor During the election President Donald Trump entered into a pact with the NRA “To make America free again”. Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles states, “They are tight with Trump Administration. They have their people in place and they know exactly what they’re going for.” Already Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), who was instrumental in defeating the 2013 Assault Weapon Ban, has a bill read twice and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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The situation is grave and urgently needs to be understood. This book, The Children of Sandy Hook vs. the US Congress is a provocative analysis of the vast gap between the American people who are intent on protecting children and the people who are intent on protecting guns whatever the cost to U.S. society. The book is about the ethical failure of the pro-gun Senators who deceived the American people with the arguments they presented that led to the failure of the Assault Weapon Ban bill in 2013. Documentation is presented to support the contention that when the Senators’ theoretical arguments are juxtaposed with the real life accounts of the Sandy Hook Massacre their deceptive language strategies for defeating the Assault Weapon Ban bill are exposed
BEWARE THE ROADBUILDERS: LITERATURE AS RESISTANCE
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Paul Thomas Peter Smagorinsky wrote, “Paul Thomas is the master of the pithy, pointed essay, and this collection should provoke readers to think hard about educational issues that matter. If you’re not acquainted with his work, now’s a great time to meet him; and if you are familiar with his writing, then you know what a treat you’re in for.” Beware the Roadbuilders: Literature as Resistance was born out of blogging as an act of social justice. Over a period of about two years, many posts built the case against market-based education reform and for a critical re-imagining of p u b l i c e d u c at i o n . Th i s b o o k p re s e n t s a coordinated series of essays based on that work, using a wide range of written and visual texts to call for the universal public education we have failed to achieve.
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Supporting that larger message are several key ideas and questions: What are the confrontational texts we should be inviting students to read, that anyone should read? Instead of reducing texts to the narrow expectations of New Criticism or “close reading,” how do we expand those texts into how they inform living in a free society and engaging in activism? How do traditional assumptions about what texts matter and what texts reveal support the status quo of power? And how can texts of all types assist in the ongoing pursuit of equity among free people?
THE SMART ONE: A GRANDFATHER’S TALE
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Ken Goodman Carole Edelsky wrote: “This book stole my heart. A child’s eye view of daily life in the shtetl. A vanished world, exchanged for the immigrant’s purse: hope, success, and tragedy—and all of it wrapped in love.” The Smart One: A Grandfather’s Tale begins in 1901 and ends in 1906 and is told to us by little Duvid Mendel Gutman, who was Ken Goodman’s father. The story is filled with conflict over the political changes taking place, as well as the love and generosity of the people Duvid encounters, including the gypsies and Jews who live in the woods with their dancing bears to protect them. With Duvid to guide us we participate with his family in Sukkos, Shabbos, Chanukah, Purim, Passover and the High Holidays. By his side we witness the strike for a 12 hour day on May Day 1904 and the Revolution in Smorgon in 1905, and we feel with him and his family the heart wrenching distress at what happened to members of his family who participated in the workers’ resistance movement to the social injustice they were forced to endure.
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The Smart One: A Grandfather’s Tale is a book to be read aloud at Chanukah and Passover, and at Yom Kippur, but also at other times by families of different religious and cultural traditions, who share with Duvid Mendel Gutman and his family an indomitable human spirit and hope for the future.
NINETEEN CLUES
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Denny Taylor Nineteen Clues: Great Transformations Can Be Achieved Through Collective Action unites the struggles of scientists, teachers and parents. It salutes their tenacity, as well as the brilliance of their arguments and their endurance. In Nineteen Clues Taylor asks “what would it take to make Earth a child safe zone?” and makes the case that there are two threats to our children that impact every aspect of their present and future lives. The first threat is the hostile takeover of the U.S. public education system. Noam Chomsky calls it, “the campaign to destroy those parts of the education system that enrich the lives of students, that interfere with indoctrination, with control, with imposing passivity and obedience.”
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Across the U.S. parents and teachers are organizing in response to these dangerous threats to children, to democracy, and to the future of U.S. society. Nineteen Clues traces the emergence of a powerful and dynamic children’s civil rights movement, and makes the case that this is a moment in history when we must unite in the struggle to make Earth a child safe zone, knowing people can succeed when governments fail.
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The second threat is the great acceleration in the changes taking place to the planet. “Humanity is standing at a moment in history when a Great Transformation is needed to respond to the immense threat to the Earth,” a group of Nobel L a u r e a t e s w r i t e i n t h e 2 0 0 7 Po t s d a m Memorandum on Global Sustainability.
TEACHING WITHOUT TESTING: ASSESSING THE COMPLEXITY OF CHILDREN’S LITERACY LEARNING
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Denny Taylor & Bobbie Kabuto Tea c h i n g w i t h o u t Te s t i n g : A s s e s s i n g t h e Complexity of Children’s Literacy Learning by Denny Taylor (author) and Bobbie Kabuto (editor), is the second book in Garn Press Women Scholars Series. This book revisits Taylor’s seminal and influential work based on her Biographic Literacy Profiles Project. Teaching without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Children’s Literacy Learning is a timely book that challenges the scientific assumptions of standardized testing in developing effective instruction to meet the literate lives of all students. Through detailed observations of student learning, Taylor encourages readers to consider alternative ways of assessing children’s reading and writing based on observable literacy behaviors. Supporting a humanistic perspective to the education of children, Taylor argues that standardized and diagnostic methods of assessment and teaching, based on test-driven, cooperate-led accountability practices, have detrimental effects on children, and result in the de-professionalization of teachers. This is a book which respects the commitment, knowledge, and experience of public school teachers and which recognizes the incredible intellectual capability of the students who attend public school.
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BLOWING OUT THE CANDLES
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James Paul Gee In an act of courage Jim Gee takes his armor off, and brutally honest, he peals back the layers, until all contrivance has left him and he appears before us vulnerable on the page. Sometime cynical, sometime searing, at times gut wrenching, Gee’s poems are of heart, mind, soul. Filled with pathos and humor they have the power to turn us inside out and make us think about our own lives, about our relationships with each other, about our covenants with religion, and about our passivity in dealing with the government and bureaucracies. These are poems not only for quiet contemplation, but also poems to be shared. There is enough in them to keep a conversation going in a class in the humanities or sciences for an entire semester, and the issues raised about the politics and ethics of representation, the demands of official ideologies, and the inexplicable human capacity for good and evil, are more than enough to keep us all conscious of the increasing dehumanization of the age in which we live.
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GREAT WOMEN SCHOLARS
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Denny Taylor (Editor) Reading as a transactional process, readerresponse, the ways texts teach, miscue analysis, kid watching, social responsibility and imagination, our existential existence, I am not yet, not yet, are all ideas that are part of who we are, but would not be without Yetta Goodman, Maxine Greene, Louise Rosenblatt, and Margaret Meek Spencer. On Friday, September 21st 2001, ten days after 9-11, Yetta, Maxine, Louise, and Margaret spoke about their lives and work, what makes teaching sublime, and about the dark side of imagination. To keep hope alive, to continue to imagine life as it could be otherwise, and for the sake of future generations and ourselves, it is important that we read what they had to say and continue to learn from them.
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SAVE OUR CHILDREN
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Denny Taylor Diane Ravitch wrote, “Save Our Children, Save Our School, Pearson Broke the Golden Rule is a political satire about the current education ‘reform’ movement. The book is funny, learned, and zany.” In an imaginary conversation at Café Griensteidl in New York City twelve venerable women scholars outdo nine very rich dangerously misguided men of enormous power. Bill Gates appears and so does Sir Michael Barber of Pearson, along with Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth and Dorothy Lintott of Alan Bennett’s History Boys. Scenes from Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall and Italo Calvino’s Daughters of the Moon are folded in. Sarah Montague of BBC’s Hardtalk, Jeremy Paxman of Nightline, and researcher and historian of education Diane Ravitch, all play their parts. Thomas Piketty of Capital in the Twenty-First Century briefly appears, as do Louis C.K. of Louie and John Cleese of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers.
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With the title a parody on a nursery rhyme, this satire defies categorization. It conjures up all the powers of drama, tragedy, and comedy, with the help of the celebrated diners at Café Griensteidl, a teacher and parent demonstration, and rappers, in a New York street scene celebration where Amsterdam meets Broadway.
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