Books by and for people who know a thing or two
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Around the Block Press

Bonnie Raitt. Betty White. Nelson Mandela. We all admire people who have been around the block, who have lived a little and let life teach them something. They have the kind of knowledge and wisdom that we're looking for in our authors.

Some of our authors are wildly creative and exciting. Some are wryly funny. Some have professional expertise and some have intuition and insight. But whatever other qualities they have, they are all grounded in the reality of love, friendship, work and all those things that make up life, good and bad.

Please take a look at our books. Two of them are available for sale now. The others will be soon.

And thanks for your patience while we construct both this website and Around the Block Press

eBook and Print

 

This Is a Test
A Handbook for Writing Good Tests
by Jan Gleiter

Our students are drastically overtested. most of us know that and are seriously concerned about it. But how many of us know that they are also subjected to very bad tests? A lot of teachers know it. A lot of parents have wondered. Now, one of the most respected assessment editors in the business has done something about it.

Jan Gleiter has written a simple, clear handbook on how to write a good test, Aimed at teachers, trainers in all fields, and educational writers and publishers, it's also a must-read for every parent who has ever looked at a student's disappointing test score and wondered whether it was really valid.

This Is a Test is less than 100 pages, but it could very well make a big change in education in our country. As Walter MacGinitie, co-creator of the respected Gates MacGinitie Reading Test, says “This little book has the potential to bring about a genuine improvement in testing."

For more information and an excerpt, and to buy the book

eBook only

 

Touching Lightly on Love and Death
three short plays
by Kathleen Thompson

In this collection of three short plays, two of them comedies, Kathleen Thompson explores the most serious issues facing us as human beings--love and death. In "I Shall Love You Forever," a young couple considers a peculiarly long-term relationship. "Kindness" looks at four women who confront grief with shopping and pie. "Private Investigations" is a tense showdown between a recently widowed woman and the private investigator she hires to look into her husband's death.

For more information and an excerpt, and to buy the book

Upcoming Books

Don't Hurt Yourself!
a month by month guide to being active and staying healthy
by Dr. Bonny Flaster

This small book lays out the best ways to live on whatever level of physical activity you choose without risking unnecessary pain and even damage. Flaster goes through the year, month by month, giving invaluable advice about how to work out, shovel snow and dig a garden bed. She speaks from experience about going too far on a bike ride and really gets to the dangers of the Turkey Bowl.

First an Image, then Explanations
the poetry of Penelope Pope

Penelope Pope is something of a legend in the LBGT community, but her work has been published in book form only once, by Marie Kuda's Lavender Press in the 1970s. In First an Image, then Explanations, we present for the first time her powerful, evocative life's work.

Dancing on Ashes
a novel by Anne V. McGravie

After the failure of her breast cancer treatment in Chicago, Isabel finds herself back in Ireland, where she was born. But how did she get to the island where she grew up? And is she really there at all?

Dancing on Ashes is absorbing and surprising. Anne McGravie writes with poetic imagination, wry humor and emotional intensity. And she has the magificent love for and command of language that we expect from the Irish.

Attack of the Killer Asparagus
and other lessons not learned in the garden
by Mike Nowak

If you don't think gardening is funny, then you haven't been reading Mike Nowak's column on the back page of Chicagoland Gardening Magazine for the past ten years. You'll soon be able to laugh your aspidistra off about dead plants and rhododendron lust. And if you're already a fan, you can toss out all those old magazines in favor of one book that you can keep by your watering can.