A Prayer for Owen Meany (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by John Irving Making the reading experience fun! Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster. Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides: *Chapter-by-chapter analysis *Explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols *A review quiz and essay topics Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect...

For teachers We know that the Common Core State Standards are encouraging you to reevaluate the books that you assign to your students. To help you decide which books are right for your classroom, each free ebook in this series contains a Common Core–aligned teaching guide and a sample chapter. This free teaching guide for A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is designed to help you put the new Common Core State Standards into practice. "Among...

The past collides with the present in The Mending as the iconoclastic Benjamin Adams Pratt prepares for a milestone school reunion that inadvertently becomes a poignant and rollicking homecoming for a prodigal son who forsook the Mormon Zion for Manhattan. Snapshots from his past emerge to form a refreshingly nuanced and complex portrait of an achingly self-conscious man of remarkable devotion and awkward loyalty. In free-flowing narratives resonant...

Already fast becoming a classic among coming-of-age tales, John the Revelator has garnered praise from Nick Laird, Colm Tóibín, Roddy Doyle, and John Boyne, and is a critical darling in the U.K. This is the story of John Devine-stuck in a small town in the otherworldly landscape of southeastern Ireland, worried over by his single, chain-smoking, Bible-quoting mother, Lily, and spied on by the "neighborly" Mrs. Nagle. When Jamey Corboy, a self-styled...

The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: “How can anyone identify a dream of the future?” The answer: “Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love.”
While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s...

Each volume provides discussions of the literary and historical background of novels from various cultures and time periods. Includes concise synopses of plot, characters and themes, a brief author biography, discussion of the story's cultural and historical significance, and excerpted criticism.