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I wrote Kid America: A Novel of Inheritance and Survival, got it published with Mission Point Press, and feel pretty good about it. I’m anxious to see how it does, and like a lot of happenings in my life, I’m on a perpetual pendulum between great aspirations and overwhelming despondency. It could do great. It could be a flop. Both possibilities are within the realm of possibilities.

So like anyone who has accomplished something for the first time after years working at it, I’m ambivalent but...

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...