Promotional Information

/ Key title A third memoir from the author of the huge international bestsellers Angela's Ashes and 'Tis. In Teacher Man, Frank McCourt details his illustrious, amusing, and sometimes rather bumpy years as an English teacher in the public high schools of New York City. / The launch of Teacher Man will be the publishing event of the year. / Huge advertising campaigns in the UK and Ireland. / Massive publicity campaign. / Frank McCourt will appear at festivals and events. / Angela's Ashes and 'Tis have sold three and a half million copies in the UK and Ireland. / Both Angela's Ashes and 'Tis will be reissued alongside Teacher Man.

About the Author

Frank McCourt's first book, Angela's Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it has sold 1.3 million copies in its Flamingo editions alone and tens of millions worldwide. He taught for 30 years in various New York City high schools and in city colleges. His sequel to Angela's Ashes, 'Tis, continued its predecessor's huge success. He lives in New York.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR ANGELA'S ASHES: 'An astonishing book ! completely mesmerising -- you can open it almost at random and find writing to make you gasp.' Independent PRAISE FOR 'TIS: 'Few will be able to resist this pacey and fluent sequel... McCourt's gift lies not simply in having lived through interesting times, but in having developed his skills as an editor and narrator to produce two fine, funny and moving slices of a past that is not simply Ireland's, but everyone's.' Guardian PRAISE FOR ANGELA'S ASHES: 'Brilliant and seductive.' THOMAS KENEALLY, author of Schindler's List 'Writing in prose that's pictorial and tactile, lyrical but streetwise, Mr McCourt does for the town of Limerick what the young Joyce did for Dublin: he conjures the place for us with such intimacy that we feel we've walked its streets and crawled its pubs.' New York Times PRAISE FOR 'TIS: "Tis is a work of great charm and power, perhaps even more so than its predecessor.' Mail on Sunday

This final memoir in the trilogy that started with Angela's Ashes and continued in 'Tis focuses almost exclusively on McCourt's 30-year teaching career in New York City's public high schools, which began at McKee Vocational and Technical in 1958. His first day in class, a fight broke out and a sandwich was hurled in anger. McCourt immediately picked it up and ate it. On the second day of class, McCourt's retort about the Irish and their sheep brought the wrath of the principal down on him. All McCourt wanted to do was teach, which wasn't easy in the jumbled bureaucracy of the New York City school system. Pretty soon he realized the system wasn't run by teachers but by sterile functionaries. "I was uncomfortable with the bureaucrats, the higher-ups, who had escaped classrooms only to turn and bother the occupants of those classrooms, teachers and students. I never wanted to fill out their forms, follow their guidelines, administer their examinations, tolerate their snooping, adjust myself to their programs and courses of study." As McCourt matured in his job, he found ingenious ways to motivate the kids: have them write "excuse notes" from Adam and Eve to God; use parts of a pen to define parts of a sentence; use cookbook recipes to get the students to think creatively. A particularly warming and enlightening lesson concerns a class of black girls at Seward Park High School who felt slighted when they were not invited to see a performance of Hamlet, and how they taught McCourt never to have diminished expectations about any of his students. McCourt throws down the gauntlet on education, asserting that teaching is more than achieving high test scores. It's about educating, about forming intellects, about getting people to think. McCourt's many fans will of course love this book, but it also should be mandatory reading for every teacher in America. And it wouldn't hurt some politicians to read it, too. (Nov. 15) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.