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Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has some of the top-ranked schools in the nation. Seven of the top ten high schools in Illinois are in CPS. The top schools have the most experienced teachers, top-notch resources, and state-of-the art facilities. And, of course, they enroll the top students from across the city. To get in, students must score high on the high school entrance exam given every fall to eighth graders both inside and outside CPS. They also must have high, if not perfect,...

I love epigraphs, or those quotes found at the beginning of a novel. They’re usually excerpts of song lyrics or poems or a sentence or two from another novel.

Written by someone other than the novel’s author, an epigraph hints at themes that will be developed in the novel. They also tell you something about the author, providing a glimpse into what they value, insights into their sensibilities.

I began thinking about epigraphs for Kid America five months ago, knowing I would need the creator’s...

I turn sixty-five in two weeks. I like to write the number in Roman alphabet instead of numerically because, well, in letter form it doesn’t look like a number. Kid America, my first young adult novel, will be released November 3. Yes, I’ll be publishing my first novel at age sixty-five and a few months.

Sixty-five is old for a debut novelist. Some might question, though, whether I can call myself a first-time author. I have buried in my past and probably in a few people’s academics stacks...