MSI Press Blog

  We cannot tell the back story of 10 Quick Homework Tips without telling the story of is sister book, 365 Teacher Secrets for Parents . So, here is the link to that back story , which we shared last Sunday Back Story of  10 Quick Homework Tips by Cindy McKinley Alder & Patti Trombly [Please do read the back story for 365 Teacher Secrets for Parents to learn how Cindy and Patti met.] A few years ago, after listening to the frustrations of parents trying to find time for everything as well as struggling to work with their kids at home more during the pandemic, Patti and I decided to create a “quick tip” book to help. It seemed homework issues were especially overwhelming and challenging for busy parents.   So, we worked together again and wrote a short book on   easy ways parents could help ease the frustrations of homework battles.   10 Quick Homework Tips was not as time-consuming, but just as fun for us to write.   It feels great to share so many decades of our practical, h

Back Story  of  365 Teachers Secrets for Parents: Fun Ways to Help Your Elementary Child Succeed in School  by Cindy McKinley Alder & Patti Trombly Nearly 30 years ago, I met Patti in the back row of a grad school classroom at Eastern Michigan University.  Our professor had us begin the class by writing out a “Bliss List”: all the things that made us happy.  When we compared lists, we were shocked to see they were almost identical! We were both due to have our first babies in a few months, both elementary school teachers, both working on a Masters in Reading, and both had a weakness for soft pretzels. We didn’t know it at the time, but that day sparked a decades-long friendship. Throughout the years, Patti taught upper elementary, and I taught the lower grades.  We met weekly with our four kids and, of course, always ended up talking about teaching and how eager the parents were to find ways to help their kids at home.  I eventually decided to stay home with my kids more and became

This Sunday, we begin a new Sunday feature: the story behind our books. We will take these one at a time, on Sundays. So, if you like knowing the unknown and little known, come on by on Sundays. This Sunday the book chosen to kick off our series is Task-Based Instruction by Leaver and Willis. This book was published by Georgetown University Press and appears among the affiliated books of MSI Press by virtue of having been co-authored by an MSI Press author (me - Leaver). At the time of the writing of this book, much was available about task-based instruction (TBI) in the English as a Second Language (ESL) field, of which the greatest amount appeared to have been written by Jane Willis of the UK, often together with her husband. For Foreign Language Education/Second Language Acquisition (L2), however, only a small generically oriented spiral-bound sample of essentially one task was available, written by Michael Long, then at the University of Hawaii.  In consulting and in administerin

  Today's book back story is about the book, Joshuanism, by Michael Vito Tosto. From the publisher: This is one of our more unusual book sagas and author journeys. When Michael came to us, he was enthusiastic about what he thought was a calling from God to reshape Christianity along lines similar to the practices of the early Christians. We found his book to be well researched and presenting an interesting view. Here is what he wrote at the time: Knowing God can sometimes be the most difficult thing we as humans can do. Many obstacles stand in our way: societal distractions, the expectations of others, temptations, even ourselves. However, have you ever considered that the very religion you practice can be the greatest obstacle? Is it possible that the institutions, conventions, and accepted norms of your religion are so fraught with baggage, human distortion, and misconceptions that your religious pursuits are actually hurting you rather than helping you? If the answer is "ye

  Dr. Elizabeth Mahlou, author of Blest Atheist , her conversion story (abbreviated here ), says she had two goals in the writing of this book. One, perhaps obvious, to any reader was to continue her conversion story after the immediate first weeks. The second, not obvious to any reader not in her personal circle, was the telling of a true story of evil, one that greatly disturbed her and some of her closest friends and one that was played out on a deeply spiritual level that is seldom discussed because many, if not most, people do not encounter such things, or if they do, do not recognize the spiritual warfare going on.  Elizabeth changed all the names and other details, such as location, professions, and organizations involved in this spiritual battle, which forms the hidden core and major prompt for this book--something the casual reader, or even perhaps the more intuitive reader, would notice. For those involved in the warfare, however, it did not matter that names were changed. Th

  Today's book back story is about Diana Keathley's book, GodSway . From the author --  GodSway: My Anecdotes with God as a book has had its own journey. Obviously, the interactions with God were special when they happened. I treasured them in my heart even as a child. They continued to happen the more I pursued Him, and I cherished each encounter. The idea of a book didn’t cross my mind, however, until one year when I was prepping my Spanish Immersion 4 th - graders for Spring testing. They were confusing the word anecdote with antidote. To illustrate the difference I used a short true story from my own life about when my family had a house fire. [No spoiler alerts here. You’ll have to read the book to find out what happened!] At the end of the story, the children were quiet. One wide-eyed girl expressed what they were all thinking. “ Ms. Keathley, did that really happen?!” In the middle of my matter-of-fact answer that yes, it was all quite true, I felt that nudge from the S

  Today's back story is about the book, It Only Hurts When I Can't Run  by Gewanda Parker. From the publisher: When Gewanda approached us with her pre-publication manuscript, it was clear that here was a person who had experienced tremendous trauma as a child. That is a story, of course. A sad story. However, what was also clear was her resilience in overcoming that trauma very, very successfully. That was a story worth publishing. An uplifting story. A story that can help others. More important for us as publisher, it fit into a line of such books, the leaders of which were Elizabeth Mahlou's Blest Atheist and Geri Henderson's and Seanne Emerton's Healing from Incest -- and ultimate prompted the commissioned book by Joanna Romer, Recovering from Domestic Abuse, Stalking, and Abuse . When it was released, Gewanda's book quickly flew to the top of Amazon's hot new releases lists: #4 Hot New Releases in the child abuse category #8 Hot New Releases in the fam

About the Book Tucker & Me: Growing Up A Part-Time Southern Boy  tells the story of a child growing up in the Mad Men era of the 1960's. Filled with humor, sadness, and harrowing incidents, the memoir reflects all the emotions of life one experiences growing up, in this case, with a single mom who lived in Los Angeles and a father who lived in a small town suburb of Atlanta, Georgia known as Tucker. Traveling in the summers to the alternate universe in Tucker, the author experienced a roller coaster ride of two completely different lifestyles. Book Endorsement "Readers can feel and taste the magical moments. You feel like you’re sitting by the fi replace with Uncle Andy, sipping coffee and listening to his fanciful yarns.” J. Bennett Easterling, author of Of God, Rattlesnakes, and Okra   Review of the Book From Readers' Favorite:  Anyone who has lived a double life like [Harvey's] will understand and enjoy these stories... This book is not just about Harv

  This week's book back story features Good Blood by Irit Schaffer. from the author -- Irit Schaffer is an author, speaker, physical therapist and healer in California. Her healing journey began in childhood where she was mesmerized by the stories of her father who had supernatural encounters with miraculous healing. Her dad journeyed through the turbulence of the Holocaust, was a Russian POW, imprisoned, suffered gunfire, gangrene infection.  There was no medicine to be had and yet he found a resilience that would change the course of his life and through his stories, hers.    Irit says “I would always ask him how he could tolerate the bullets taken out and not scream, and he would say that he had good blood. I would ask him if I had good blood, and he would laugh.”  That story set in motion Irit’s never-ending desire to understand the mind /body connection and the resiliency and resourcefulness of the human body mind spirit, called “Good Blood”.    Irit went on to achieve a Mast