Appropriate for any college course or advanced placement course that emphasizes writing about literature. Message: Writing about Literature serves as a hands-on guide for writing about literature, thus justifying the integration of literature and composition. The reading of literature encourages students to think, and the use of literary topics gives instructors a viable way to combine writing and literary study. Story: When Ed Roberts first wrote Writing about Literature many years ago, he was responding to a direct need in his classroom. He realized that there was a direct connection between the way he made his assignments and the quality of student work he received. The more he described to his students what he wanted, and the longer he explained things, the better the final essays turned out to be. That's when he started to write and hand out directions, thus saving him valuable classroom time. He tried and tested each assignment in a number of separate classes, and he has made innumerable changes and improvements based on both student questions and student writing. To this day, each new edition is revised and tweaked based on professors' needs.