In the cramped, book-lined office of a former high school English teacher in Portland, Oregon, an idea was born from sheer exhaustion. The year was 2008, and the teacher, Justin, had just spent his entire Sunday afternoon hunched over a stack of student essays. Each paper attempted to analyze the green light in The Great Gatsby . Each one, despite his best lectures, was painfully, achingly close to the argument presented in the ubiquitous yellow-and-black study guides from a certain well-known company based in Spokane, Washington.
A teacher in Texas emailed Justin: "My ELL students finally understand foreshadowing because your chart shows them where to look. You’ve given them a map, not a taxi." licharts
He walked out of the skyscraper and back to the rain-soaked streets of Portland, where his small team of six people—mostly former teachers and obsessive readers—continued to write guides for obscure poems by John Donne and forgotten plays by Aphra Behn. In the cramped, book-lined office of a former