The very first SPI publication, born out of the New York City Lab School, Coring the Apple is a creative Zagat-like rating... More > of “Best-Of” New York City. Embodying the heart of the SPI philosophy-student as writer, student as expert-the expert writing of these 126 eighth graders ranges from The Best Place to be Watched because of What You’re Eating to The Best Park Bench to Quietly Finish Your Homework. Expect to be transported through as many places, moods and perspectives as there are authors. < Less

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Linking Literature is a book of student-written oral histories that explore thematic connections between historical literary... More > texts and our contemporary society. Using Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird as an entry point, students record and craft oral histories that capture people’s very real experiences around themes of justice, empathy and innocence. This collection of 32 oral histories is the result of a two-month long process during which students tackled the sometimes daunting challenges that come with interviewing, transcribing, edited and drafting. They also came to discover that often there is little difference between fiction and reality. Subjects range from the unknown to the famous, and include Holocaust survivors, local political figures and renowned journalist Bill Moyers. < Less

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If your school were a time capsule, what personal artifact would you place in it? If you had to search your
memory for one... More > poignant event to share with future generations, what story would you tell? The 11th grade
students at Hoboken/A.J. Demarest High School focused on the concept of time for this year's book
project. A time capsule gives the present a chance to communicate with the future—this book contains
voices from the year 2010, forever etched within the pages of a book, words that will live on long after the
walls crumble. < Less

This is Where I Need to Be: Oral Histories of Muslim Youth in NYC is a groundbreaking collection of oral history narratives... More > from the lives of ordinary Muslim youth as told by Muslim youth. Trained in the methods of oral history at Teachers College, Columbia University, a dozen Muslim teenagers set out to document stories from the real-life experiences and feelings of their Muslim peers in public high schools. The result is an amazing collection of twenty-three oral histories. These are voices of teenagers living ordinary lives at a time when being Muslim in America can provoke "extraordinary" reactions from classmates and teachers, from friends and strangers, or even from one's own family and kin. Whatever you think you know about Muslims in America, these stories rise above news-cycle stereotypes and open a personal window onto what it means to be young and Muslim. < Less

Meet the residents of Long Creek, South Portland, Maine’s youth detention center. This dynamic group of writers represent... More > the youth of troubled, absent, nontraditional families, and of loving and unfailingly supportive families. Some of these students fell into drugs, are survivors of childhood or unaware of certain cultural mores. All of them are children you’d never expect to end up behind bars. Each story is a hard-won and compelling reflection on the ripple effect of the choices we make.

“Sharing their stories is an important part of the process of healing and growth for these young men and women and our reading and discussion of Smoke Signals can give us the necessary compassion to begin to assist in that transformative process.”
- Michael Houlihan, Founder and Director, Portage House and Four-term President of the Wisconsin Halfway House Federation < Less

Students at Foundations Academy, Brooklyn, NY, write about various people in the community of Bedford-Stuyvesant.