"Write Through Chicago" offers both teachers and students a unique opportunity to connect with Chicago and its remarkable history. Young writers will mourn at Lincoln's Chicago Funeral, marvel at the Columbian Exposition, gather with the crowd at the Haymarket Riot, drive to Riverview Amusement Park, chomp down on the first McDonald's Burger, and celebrate at Grant Park as Barack Obama delivers his presidential acceptance speech. They'll craft a wide range of written forms, from stories and poems to polemics, monologues, diaries, letters and more. All "Write Through Chicago" writing activities align to NCTE & Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and are supported by a website that provides students with ready access to specifically selected research materials. This unique design leaves teachers free to concentrate on helping students truly "learn about a city by writing about a city."
"KIRKUS REVIEWS"
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...Larson ("The Creative Writing Handbook," 1992) and Boone ("Forest High," 2011) collaborate to produce a guide primarily for students, although it'd be useful for anyone "curious about Chicago and anxious to write." Their guide covers nearly a dozen of the nationwide Common Core State Standards for writing, including orienting students to the rhetorical forms of argument, exposition and narrative, and to disciplines like planning, revising and rewriting. The authors approach their task by presenting students with a series of archived headlines from different pivotal points in Chicago history, from the days of fur trader Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable in 1790 to the passage through town of President Lincoln's funeral train in 1865 to the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871, as well as the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, the World Series of 1906 and newly elected Barack Obama's victory speech from 2008. In all these cases and many more, the authors encourage writing students to extrapolate from the headline and quick bullet points of the event, with pointed motivations to consider as many angles as possible, such as the president's Secret Service detail or the engineers on Lincoln's train. It's also recommended for students to go online for further research and to imagine how they would have reacted at the time. Finally, students are encouraged to envision a new scenario spun off from the headline's setting but involving them personally. In all cases, students are carefully guided through the use of educator Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Objectives, first using so-called lower-level thinking (knowledge, comprehension and application) and then higher-level thinking (analysis, synthesis and evaluation). The headlines are well-chosen to represent a wide range of interests-everything from the social reforms of Jane Addams and Hull House to the poetry of Carl Sandburg and the prose of Studs Terkel-and the concept of making writing exercises come alive through local history is an inspired one.
A stimulating, well-presented approach to getting students interested in writing.
"Write Through Chicago" is the best present an English teacher could receive. This book brings to the forefront a logical yet creative way of addressing what is truly important: engaging students to think creatively and insightfully about the world around them. By allowing students to write themselves into Chicago history, Larson and Boone have seamlessly brought together the best parts of teaching and writing. This is the kind of book that makes teachers want to teach.
"-Deborah Will, former President, Illinois Association of Teachers of English"

In a time when the importance of teachers has been unfairly challenged, Bob Boone gives us a collection of simply told, hard-edged tales from the lives of educators and their students. These rich, multifaceted stories ring true with details gleaned over the course of a full life. Reading them, one feels as if they are entering another version of our familiar reality, where secrets thrive in quiet classrooms and a passionate love of the pitfalls and victories of teaching motivates the creation of narrative.
"-Lisa Locascio, University of Southern California, Recipient of the 2011 John Steinbeck Award for Fiction"
These aren't your typical teacher stories. In the living and breathing world of brick, glass and glue sticks, we want our teachers to leave their real lives-their darknesses, their longings, their secrets and desires-back at their desks and locked in their lockers in the faculty room. But this is Bob Boone's school. There is no safe place here for the containment of these things. The best Boone's characters can do is take off their jackets at the door, empty the pockets of their pants-their shreds and crumplings, their histories and regret, their hearts and longings-stuff it all in the pockets and sleeves of their jackets, drape their coats over the backs of their chairs, and just like the rest of us, cross their fingers and pray to God that nothing falls out before the bell rings.
"-Billy Lombardo, Author, 'The Man with Two Arms', Recipient of the 2011 Nelson Algren Award for the Short Story"
The stories are wonderful and beautifully written, with insights into the interior of a parallel, minimalist universe of the everyday. What makes these stories ultimately so arresting is how they capture the quiet, unspoken fears, the normalcy of unfinished relationships, and the inner strength it takes to face each day. The quietness of the stories belies their energy and the resilience of the characters which becomes a moving celebration of the human spirit.
"-Milos Stehlik, Critic for Worldview on WBEZ/Chicago Public Radio"
Bob Boone gives us an insider's view into the world of Forest High. These stories are spare, terse and capture the quirkiness of characters and circumstance utterly consistent with the world of schools-a world where, as Boone well knows, every story implies another. An astute observer, Bob Boone writes with humor, compassion and insight.
"-Larry Starzec, Fiction Editor, 'Willow Review', Professor of English at College of Lake County"
Implicit in these tales are basic human questions: what does it mean to be a good teacher or a good person? What, for that matter, is meant by the phrase 'good school'? In this age of standardized tests and the relentless attempt at quantifying students and teachers alike, Bob's stories offer a refreshingly human portrayal of his characters. He never fails to see the comedy in the conflict between the conventional and unconventional, and he portrays his characters with nothing less than a sympathetic eye. In these stories, Bob always looks beyond the Forest to the individual trees.
"-John O'Connor, Author, 'Wordplaygrounds', Teacher at New Trier High School"