Better readers make better writers.
Today's students do read—we know that they read a significant amount of email, text messages, web pages, and even magazines. What many do not do is read in a sustained way. Many do not come to college prepared to read long texts, nor do they come with the tools necessary to analyze and synthesize what they read. Nick Delbanco and Alan Cheuse have proven in their own teaching that when you improve students' ability and interest in reading, you will help them improve their writing.
Bringing writers to students, Bringing students to writing.
Literature: Craft and Voice is an innovative new Introductory Literature program designed to engage students in the reading of Literature, all with a view to developing their reading, analytical, and written skills. Accompanied by, and integrated with, video interviews of dozens of living authors who are featured in the text, conducted by authors Nick Delbanco and Alan Cheuse specifically for use with their textbook, the book provides a living voice for the literature on the page and creates a link between the student and the authors of great works of literature. The first text of its kind, Literature: Craft and Voice offers a more enjoyable and effective reading experience through its fresh, inviting design and accompanying rich video program.
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Visually Rich: Students read, but they read differently. Literature: Craft & Voice presents literature in a format students are familiar with, and engages them visually. Images provide visual cues to grab attention and aid recall for writing. Conversations on Writing tie in with author videos continuing to engage students with selections that are read aloud by the authors themselves.
Easy to Carry: Presented as slim and magazine-sized three-volume set, as opposed to the thick, phone-book sized tome, Literature: Craft & Voice is preferred by students and carried to class more often than other anthologies. For convenience, the Handbook for Writing from Reading and the full glossary appear at the back of each volume.
Designed for Reading: Literature: Craft and Voice is designed with larger text that is easier on the eyes and allows sustained reading. Ample white space and a higher quality paper evoke a more magazine-like style that students prefer. The text also includes wider margins for annotations.
Conversations on Writing with over 30 of today's most celebrated authors, interviewed by Delbanco and Cheuse exclusively for this text.
Make the Reading-Writing Connection: Because effective critical writing is one of the main goals of this course, each volume of Literature: Craft & Voice begins with three chapters that guide students through first reading the elements of that particular genre, then an interactive reading that shows students how to annotate and notice important aspects of a type of work, and finally a chapter that demonstrates, with three drafts of a student paper, how students should brainstorm, write, and revise a critical analysis of a work of literature.
In addition, each selection is followed by Writing from Reading prompts which guide students from a more basic summary, to analysis of craft and voice, to synthesis of key ideas, to a deeper interpretation of the work. Most instructors agree, these are the same steps a student should take when writing any critical analysis of a work.
