Books

by Jerome Tiller

Broadly speaking, a classic is something of sufficient quality to have withstood the ravages of time. Today, for my own purposes, I will revise this definition, first by dropping the test of time angle and next by elevating the quality aspect. This allows me to declare that my first effort at adaptation in 2007 is indeed a classic that deserves to be recognized as one.

Why so?  Because I am a delirious ego-maniac? Perhaps. But in order to be fair to me, a little history. In 2007 I formed a self-publishing company (ArtWrite Productions ) so I could adapt for publication a term paper my son Paul had created for his middle-school science class. I lifted it and adapted it with Paul’s permission after employing him to refine and expand the illustrations he had created for his term paper. That book was titled: Sammy’s Day at the Fair: The Digestive System, featuring Gut Feelings and Reactions. In 2018 I published a second, slightly revised and updated edition of the book. That edition won gold and silver medals from the Midwest Independent Publisher Association (MIPA)—the gold for Children’s Non-Fiction, the Silver for Children’s Fiction.

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by Jerome Tiller

Fans of Adam might dislike ArtWrite Productions, the publisher of the Adapted Classics book Mark Twain’s the Diaries of Eve and Adam. The reason? The publisher decided to place Eve’s name before Adam’s in the title of the book. This upsets tradition, fans of Adam might say, and you do not upset tradition to appease women or to appeal to them for financial gain (women do buy more books than men, and men almost never buy books for their children). Well, fans of Adam, do you want to know what lake you can jump into? How about the first lake you come upon? 

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by Jerome Tiller

Mark Twain illustrates his point well in the story Running for Governor, one of three stories in Twain Illustrated. And what point is that? These days you could easily transpose it to be: Make Fox News pay the price.

Running for Governor is a story that Twain wrote in 1872 for his monthly column in The Galaxy, a literary magazine. It centers on corrupt reporting in newspapers and shows modern readers that misinformation has been freely practiced in the USA for as long as forever.
View and/or download a FREE pdf version of Twain Illustrated  here!
Big News! The Midwest Publishers Association (MIPA) has named Twain Illustrated finalist for Best Short Story Anthology of 2022!.

 

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by Jerome Tiller

Publication Dates Little ArtWrite Productions had postponed the publication dates for two forthcoming books due to lack of interest. But we have now published the books. ”Sammy’s Day at the Fair: etc., etc. and “Hawthorne Illustrated”, on August 1, 2018 and August 31, 2018, respectively.

In a December blog I announced the aforementioned books whose publication dates we then later postponed for lack of interest. I focused on pretty thoroughly previewing “Hawthorne Illustrated” in that December post. I also said why the other one, Sammy’s Day, etc., etc., though not a classic, has classic qualities and why you should be interested.

So here’s the explanations. The book “Sammy’s, etc., etc.” contains accessible scientific descriptions of a young lad’s working digestive system. Since classic...

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by Jerome Tiller

Bundling illustrated Hawthorne stories for middle school made for pleasant work. That’s because Nathaniel Hawthorne tells great stories that illustrate well. Quite frankly, we believe kids and their parents should read them. We think who wouldn’t like Hawthorne stories, especially when masterfully illustrated by Marc Johnson-Pencook? So, we went and did it. We published Hawthorne Illustrated, a volume of three Hawthorne on August 31, 2018. Middle school readers will happily soak up these stories if only parents would point, maybe nudge them, to drink from the great classics well.

Speaking of wells, Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment leads the combined three stories we are talking about. I suppose underground spring would be a more accurate term than well when describing the central feature of...

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by Jerome Tiller

Can you imagine a parent rejecting the purchase or loan of a book of illustrated classic literature for their middle school reader because picture books are for little kids? You should be able to imagine this because it probably happens all the time. Major book publishers and booksellers have seen sales of illustrated books slump during the past couple of decades. They speculate parents are responsible for the decline in sales. They think parents point kids to chapter books early on because they want their kids to rapidly advance in school. And of course, eventually succeed as adults in a highly competitive world. Might these parents then reject illustrated literature and prefer chapter books without due consideration for content? So...

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by Jerome Tiller

Did you know Nathaniel Hawthorne was both a serious man and a funny guy. Many people who think of him as nothing but a great moralist should read “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”. Hawthorne told it in a light, humorous vein, and he didn’t use it to deliver a great moral message. But as for serious—well, this story is…seriously funny. And seriously sweet!

Unusual though this story is coming from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, a contemporary of Hawthorne and a renowned literary critic, praised “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”. He described it as “vividly original and dexterously managed”. Other critics have favorably compared Dominicus Pike, the story’s main character, to Ichabod Crane, the main character in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. Both...

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by Jerome Tiller

Issues regarding intentions and principles loomed while adapting “Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Eve and Adam”. I was concerned that Eve’s character could change if I added new material to combine two separate stories by Twain. But I gave myself leeway to add material because I had no intention to change Eve’s character. Heck, I would not intentionally change any aspect of any character created by Mark Twain. My sole motive in adding new material was to keep dialogue going between Eve and Adam from beginning to end. I tried to keep Eve’s character in line with Twain’s Eve by closely considering what Eve had to say in her diary before the fall, along with the few things she had to say...

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by Jerome Tiller

Studies by the U.S. Department of Education have shown the overall amount of pleasure reading by young people has steadily declined. There are many theories why this is so, including those that point to trade-offs and time constraints; young people abandon pleasure reading to focus instead on digital devices or to use what once had been free time to expend extra effort in meeting the regimented demands of an achievement culture.

Yet everyone knows that young people will seek and find fun wherever it can be found – it’s their natural instinct. Then what if they were  to find more fun in pleasure books at their reading level?  Like the fun they once found in the picture books of their...

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by Jerome Tiller

Eve and Apple ArtWrite Productions will publish "Mark Twain's The Diaries of Eve and Adam" on June 30, 2017. It will be the sixth book in our Adapted Classics collection of illustrated literature. We are happy to announce this will be the first time we publish an Adapted Classics book in both hardcover and softcover. Near the end of his life, Mark Twain wrote a series of six stories commonly known as the ‘Adamic Diaries’. Four of the stories poke fun at Christianity and are dark in tone. These stories were not published until after Twain died in 1910. Two of the six stories in the series were published as illustrated books while Twain lived—Extracts from Adam’s Diary...

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