Nobody says school is easy. Studying is difficult, as is memorizing information for a test. Fortunately, there are books that can help you to make dealing with school easier.

Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley

This book is a bestseller in memory improvement. It has strategies to help learn faster and become more productive. Of course, having a good memory comes in handy outside of the classroom as well. Really, this is a great book for life in general.

On Course by Skip Downing

It is another book worth reading. In its eighth edition, the book provides self-assessment tools to help identify what is needed to change for academic success. It contains guided journal entries to help readers with responsibility, self-management, self-awareness, learning and self-esteem.

Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers by Kate L. Turabian

Many students reach college and find that essay writing in college is very different from that in high school. Whether this is the case or not, Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers is a perfect choice for those who want to improve writing skills. It’s available on Kindle or in hardback or paperback forms. Right now, this one is its fourth edition. The book covers writing actual paper, citing sources, and style.

How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport

The book came out in 2006. It enjoys great popularity among learners all over the world. The book deals with different approaches and strategies to help achieve good academic performance but spend less time on studying, with a focus on studying smarter, not harder. It’s available on Kindle and in audio book and paperback forms.

Penguin’s Who Was? series tells the incredible stories of trailblazers (开拓者), legends, innovators, and creators. The following are frequently asked questions:

How many Who Was? titles are there?

About 250 Who Was? titles have been published since the series first began 20 years ago. And with the addition of the What Was? and Where Is? series, readers now have more than 300 amazing books about influential people, world-famous landmarks, and interesting historical events.

How do you choose the subjects for the Who Was? titles?

The subjects for the Who Was? series are often decided quite far in advance. People who are the first at something, or the best at what they do, or who have made major contributions in their field—and sometimes all three—make the best subjects.

What was the first Who Was? book?

The first four Who Was? books—Who Was Sacagawea?, Who Was Ben Franklin?, Who Was Albert Einstein?, and Who Was Annie Oakley2—were actually published on the same day. So when February 18 rolls around, be sure to wish these books a Happy Birthday!

Does the same person illustrate every cover?

Just about every Who Was? cover (except two)is illustrated by Nancy Harrison, who has been working on the series since the very first book.

How long does it take to complete one book?

It can take years! And sometimes the books are finished much more quickly. From the time an author is contracted to write the manuscript, through editing, copy editing, design and illustration, to publication, it takes—on average—eighteen to twenty-four months.

Franz Kafka wrote that "a book must be the ax (斧子) for the frozen sea inside us." I once shared this sentence with a class of seventh graders, and it didn’t seem to require any explanation.

We’d just finished John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. When we read the end together out loud in class, my toughest boy, a star basketball player, wept a little, and so did I. "Are you crying?" one girl asked, as she got out of her chair to take a closer look. "I am," I told her, "and the funny thing is I’ve read it many times."

But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I’ve taught kids with imprisoned parents, abusive parents, irresponsible parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless; kids who grew up in violent neighborhoods. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel’s terrible logic — the giving way of dreams to fate (命运).

For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my headmaster after learning that a former excellent student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school — one that often attracts the literary-minded children of Manhattan’s upper classes — into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, with a father in prison, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional "cultural capital" could help students like her develop better in high school, where they would unavoidably meet, perhaps for the first time, students who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned Ph. D.’s.

Along with Of Mice and Men, my groups read: Sounder, The Red Pony, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The students didn’t always read from the expected point of view. About The Red Pony, one student said, "it’s about being a man, it’s about manliness." I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies (独白) read as raps (说唱), but both made sense; the interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck’s writing, one boy went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that "all these people hate each other, and they’re all white." His historical view was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year, former students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their first year in college as a result of the classes.

Year after year, however, we are increasing the number of practice tests. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, not for emotional punch (碰撞) but for text complexity. Yet, we cannot enrich (充实) the minds of our students by testing them on texts that ignore their hearts. We are teaching them that words do not amaze but confuse. We may succeed in raising test scores, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.