Concrete Jungle, Necessary Evil, The Land In Between, and other book titles are John Dewey High specials. You won’t be able to find them anywhere else, because these novels were written by ninth grade Dewey students.
To celebrate, JDHS hosted a publishing party on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026 open to all students and staff to admire freshmen achievements.
Students presented dozens of their books titles, just like every professional book writer in a printed hard-cover format.
This project was first started by a Dewey ELA teacher Ms. Cifferelli in 2020 during COVID pandemic as an academic project. She said “that students are able to [write] at home on their own, as something meaningful to do.”
The lockdown ended, but the project kept on growing and evolving- English Teacher Ms. Lane’s students began to participate in the project as well. This year, the sixth generation of freshmen students are coming out with their own books that they have worked on from September all the way to February.
The main goal of this project, according to Ms. Cifferelli is to give the students room for personal expression as well as practice of major writing and composition skills. She also labelled it “An ELA skills speedrun.”
Some student authors who have achieved a benchmark of 50,000 words, such as Elsa Gao with her detective novel “Blind Scales”, were awarded with a “NaNoWriMo Winner” seal.
“It makes me nervous to present my work, but also proud at the same time to show off my novel,” said Duncan Fischer, a Dewey freshman and an ELA student, wrote a novel titled “The Exorcist”. Fisher tells a story about a boy’s adventure through a land full of demons and magical creatures.
This project is not just another essay for ‘homework due next Monday’- it’s a long run/journey, stretching over most of the school year that fascinated students because it didn’t just give a single prompt for a 3-paragraph long text. Instead, it allowed students to become artists and write their own stories.
“It was very interesting to write the novel. I was sipping tea everyday, my mind was blurring all day and night. Most of my thoughts happened at night when I was more relaxed,” said freshman Lazi Barbakadze.