One of the things I have most looked forward to for 2nd semester in Challenge B has been the short story seminar. In our Exposition and Composition strand, the students study classic short stories from a variety of authors, concurrently studying the elements of a short story and writing their own. Most Challenge B tutors then bind the stories into some sort of book and present them to the students at the end of the year.
I received my students’ book in the mail today and I absolutely can’t wait to give them to them! I think they turned out fabulous! The pages are full color throughout, with a section at the back of candid shots taken throughout the year.

Compared to a standard trade paperback, these are only a tiny bit taller. Mine was 82 pages, which is about 1/3 the size of the book it’s next to in this photo.

I chose to lay out the book so that each new story started on the right-hand side. They each include an illustration from the student to go along with their story.

A section at the back of the book contains photos taken throughout the year and is a place where the students can sign one another’s books if they want to.
I had them printed at The Book Patch. Their website is very easy to navigate and they provide templates for each of the book sizes that they sell. I downloaded the template for the trade paperback size then customized it with my own content and photos. I ordered them on a Tuesday morning and received them exactly two weeks later in my mailbox via USPS, although you can pay more for premium shipping if you need them fast.
Are you a Challenge B tutor? What do you do for anthologies? How and when do you generally give them to your students?
I love this! I am going to tutor Challenge A next year, and I am so glad to have your posts to refer back to, to help equip me for this role (and hopefully for the year after that, if I can do Challenge B). Thank you for sharing 🙂
You’re welcome! I so wish I had been regularly posting during this first year as a Challenge B tutor but I just never made the time–I seemed to have so little of it! I hope to do better this next year since it will be my second one, and hopefully will be able to share some knowledge that will help others as they travel a similar road. Best wishes to you! 🙂
Beautiful! How much were they? I did not see a listing for color pictures on the website — could you tell me how to add photos to the book?
Mine were $13.70 each. That was 82 pages, 6×9, color cover and color pages inside. The website allows you to choose whether you want color on the inside so since I knew I wanted to include some photos (plus their story illustrations), I went with that. To add the photos, I just used the Insert > Image menu in Microsoft Word. They aren’t laid out perfectly because Word isn’t a graphics program, per se, but they look good enough. 🙂