Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is publishing a monthly series of e-only essays to correspond with Katherine Paterson's two-year term as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. The subjects of the essays include: writing and literature for young people, the wonder and imagination found within great books, common questions novice writers ask, and Katherine's own personal experiences throughout her historic career.

Crome Yellow (1921) is a novel by English author Aldous Huxley. Inspired by his stay at Garsington Manor with members of the Bloomsbury Group, Crome Yellow, Huxley's debut novel, satirizes the society of England's intellectual and political elite. In addition to its autobiographical content, the novel investigates such themes as spirituality, the nature and composition of art, and the fear of a dystopian future. Invited to spend part of the summer...

"The Business of being a writer offers the business education writers need but so rarely receive. It is meant for early-career writers looking to develop a realistic set of expectations about making money from their work or for working writers who want a better understanding of the industry. Writers will gain a comprehensive picture of how the publishing world works--from queries and agents to blogging and advertising--and will learn how they can...

Accomplished storytellers Kate Messner and Mark Siegel playfully chronicle the process of becoming a writer in this fun follow-up to How to Read a Story, guiding young storytellers through the joys and challenges of the writing process. From choosing an idea, to creating a problem for their character to resolve, to coming to The End, this empowering picture book breaks down the writing process in a dynamic and accessible way, encouraging kids to explore...

In her book In the company of children, Joanne Hindley invites you inside her third-grade New York City classroom to "have a look" as she describes her reading and writing workshops. Joanne extends the invitation once again through a series of four video programs that give you a close-up look at mini-lessons and conferences during those workshops. In the two programs on reading mini-lessons and writing mini-lessons, she explores and rethinks the resources,...

"The swine put twine on my spine. With rhyming, carefully leveled text and comedic, colorful illustrations, this book provides plenty of examples of long vowel sounds with consonant blends and encourages readers to try the sounds for themselves"--

Handwriting analysis, or graphology, is the science involved in producing a personality profile of the writer by examining the characteristics, traits and strokes of an individual's handwriting. It seems impossible, but a trained graphologist can gather an astonishing amount of information about the writer just from analyzing their handwriting. Besides creating a complete personality profile, many other things are revealed in your handwriting, such...

A shipwrecked Viking prince, a band of gold, passed from generation to generation, the hidden history that links Joan of Arc, Daniel Boone, and Abraham Lincoln — this 1921 tapestry of fourteen interconnected stories sweeps the reader on a breathless quest through the ages.

The ultimate test of a student's knowledge about words is the ability to transfer this information to reading and writing. A word study intervention must include opportunities for students to apply word-solving strategies to connected texts. Organized around 11 teaching episodes, including assessing word knowledge, modeling the word-solving process, providing guided practice, and prompting students to apply strategies during reading and writing, Small...