Summer’s Hot New Picks

Take a break from policy tomes or curriculum planners, and enjoy the lighter side of the ed world.

Here’s a slew of great new books with education-related themes, from renewed interest in one of the classroom’s most beloved living authors to the least-expected criteria necessary to crack the Ivy League. To ease the transition from test time, why not start off with John McNally’s America’s Report Card, a novel offering a look at what happens when Scan-Tron sheets, war, and elections collide:

"I'm not going to be a teacher anymore," Mrs. Grant said. "I'm leaving the profession. They're making it too hard for us."

"Who?"

"The government."

And then Mrs. Grant, who never complained about anything, not even the time Mike Tatlinger put Joanne Messina’s baloney and cheese sandwich into the kiln, launched into a diatribe about the No Child Left Behind Act, and how politicians were a bunch of hypocrites when it came to education, how they set new standards, in some cases impossible standards, even as they cut the schools’ budgets.

In short order, Mrs. Grant is found dead in this wacky novel enmeshed in the high-stakes testing world. After spending an Iowa summer grading standardized tests (“migrant work for the overeducated underemployed”), Charlie appoints himself protector of one of Mrs. Grant’s essay-writing students and finds a renewed sense of purpose. Government and education conspiracy enthusiasts will find some great riffs, and those looking for a steamy beach read where everybody knows NCLB’s name will not be disappointed.

If Nelle Harper Lee hadn’t decided to drop out of law school to pursue writing, we might not have the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird, which still sells a million copies a year more than 35 years after it was first published. Nary an English teacher hasn’t taught Lee’s only published novel, including former teacher Charles J. Shields. He couldn’t secure a meeting with the legendary writer, but he did interview hundreds of people to write the first major biography of Lee, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. Mockingbird is a must-read for anybody who’s wondered what events inspired her quintessential American novel (a murder trial that her father argued), her life (still residing in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, with her sister Alice, an attorney who continues to practice in her mid-90s), or her writing (she’s rumored to be working on her memoirs).

In TKAM, Lee immortalized her childhood friend and neighbor, Truman Capote, as Scout’s pal Dill. Not long before that book was published, Capote invited Lee to be a research assistant for what would become his own seminal work, In Cold Blood. Last year’s Capote, now out on DVD, depicts their literary work habits, how they both handled overwhelming success, and their unique relationship. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener both received Oscar nominations (and Hoffman won) for their roles as childhood chums and legendary writers.

—Rebecca L. Weber

Read Out of Your Field Join a Professional Book Club Try Audio Web Exclusives: Summer’s Hot New Picks Feeding the Bookworm How to Organize a 'Teachers as Readers' Club Stop the Brain Drain

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