Chain Gang Elementary - Softcover

Grant, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0983492107 ISBN 13: 9780983492108

Publisher: Thornbriar Press, 2011

Synopsis

“In the first place, God created idiots. This was for practice. Then he created School Boards.” –Mark Twain After a murder at Bonaire Elementary, Richard and Anna Lee Gray seek a good school for their son Nick in a safe neighborhood. Their search leads them to Malliford, a “school of excellence.” When redistricting sends scores of minority students to Malliford, iron-willed Principal Estelle Rutherford declares war on kids to raise test scores and save her reputation. Dissident parents revolt, electing Richard to head the Parent-Teacher Organization, and tensions explode. Welcome to Chain Gang Elementary, home to vast right-wing conspiracies, 3rd-grade gangsters, and bake sale embezzlers–where toxic childhood secrets boil over, reformers go stark raving mad, and culture wars escalate into armed conflict. A tale of war that is poignant, timely, and brutally funny, Chain Gang Elementary is a One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest for the K-6 world. First Sentence: In the twelfth year of his marriage, sixteen months before the shooting, twenty-one shopping days until Christmas, and eight hours before he reckoned for the tenth time that his wife didn’t love him, Richard Gray met a woman who would have roughly the same effect on his life a tornado has on a trailer park. Visit www.chaingangelementary.com or Chain Gang Elementary's facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chain-Gang-Elementary/268343289846138?v=wall

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Grant is the author of the novels Chain Gang Elementary and Brambleman, winner of the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Award for popular fiction. He is also the co-author/editor of his late father's monumental history, The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia (UGA Press, 2001) - the Peach State's nonfiction "Book of the Year" and Editor's Choice at American Heritage. His third novel, Party to a Crime, will be published by Thornbriar Press in 2014.

Grant grew up on a Midwestern farm. came down South, and graduated from the University of Georgia. The former journalist, state government spokesman, PTA president, and soccer coach lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children.

He is currently at work on The Unhappy History of Higgston, Missouri, the unfortunate tale of a drone strike on a small town, which Grant describes as "the honey badger of zombie novels."

From the Back Cover

ON HONORS DAY, Alicia Rodriguez sobbed and searched the crowd for a friendly face. She found Richard Gray and gazed at him plaintively. They both knew the deal. He had coaxed her off the bus on the first day of school. Malliford was great, he told her. She would make lots of friends. But those were lies. Now the seven-year-old was in tears, publicly humiliated. How could he allow this after making such promises?

And there he had it: The little girl was a human sacrifice to test scores, and her treatment was a brutal refutation to Miz Rutherford's clichés about diversity. This was wrong, and Richard had to do something, even if it was loud and stupid.

It was a Popeye moment. Richard couldn't stand any more. If he'd had a can of spinach, he would have swallowed it in one gulp. Instead of a whistle blast from a corncob pipe, there was a scratchy squeak of chair legs as he stood. Three hundred people in the auditorium turned to stare at the PTO president, wondering what the crazy fool who used a yo-yo for a gavel would do next.

From the Inside Flap

In the twelfth year of his marriage, sixteen months before the shooting, twenty-one shopping days until Christmas, and eight hours before he reckoned for the tenth time that his wife didn't love him, Richard Gray met a woman who would have roughly the same effect on his life a tornado has on a trailer park.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thornbriar Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0983492107
• ISBN 13: 9780983492108
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344