We typically think that “fairy stories” are not “real” stories. Fairy stories are stories, yes. But fairy stories are about a make-believe place that doesn’t exist. Tolkien in this essay shows just how wrong-headed this understanding of fairy stories is. Fairy stories are not only fantastical (they enchant) but are also fantasy (they are not about this flesh and blood world). Fairy stories are doorway, a passage, a portal between two worlds -- this primary world where everything can be measured and tested and another world where reality, and truth, and love, and friendship can never be reduced to any measuring stick. Tolkien turns what’s “real” on its head. The debate is not about how much a dragon weighs, but whether there is some power that can slay dragons. The essay is important because it shows why CPP is narrative and why CPP produces hope, efficacy, and the belief in a new life.
https://archive.org/details/on-fairy-stories_202110/mode/2up
Naomi Baron outlines the data backed pros and cons between print and digital reading mediums. Without shying away from the economic benefits of digital, she bolsters the many reasons that CPP is exclusively print. Print engages the senses: sight (the words remain where you left them), touch, smell. Print fosters memory in a way that the transience of digital simply does not. Print leads to more careful reading. Print makes it easier to concentrate, learn, and remember. Print allows for easier annotation, which enhances learning – print is active not passive. CPP believes that print allows communion with the book –word becomes tangible, word becomes teacher, and in the loneliest moments of a cell, word becomes companion, community, and friend.
https://aura.american.edu/articles/online_resource/Medium_matters_for_reading_what_we_know_about_learning_with_print_and_digital_screens_A_report_for_K-12_educators/23857212?file=41851053
The authors of this article demonstrate through qualitative and quantitative research that a belief that one can stop committing crimes is a game changer. If one believes, they can change. Belief that it is possible to stop committing crime (self-efficacy) leads to agency (taking control of one’s own life) and then desistance from crime (stopping the actions that lead to further crime,and thus not committing more crimes). CPP is an agency enabler of the kind of self-efficacy that results in desistance. CPP aggregates (collects in one place) other agency enablers of self-efficacy that results in desistance. The reason it does is because CPP performs cultural literacy.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40865-018-0101-1
“The central idea of this book is a disarmingly simple one: in the modern world in which we all live, identity is a life story…the major psychosocial challenge facing all of us as modern adults is to make something good of our lives in our own time, place, and ethos. To a large extent, the good life is justified by the good story. And the good life story is one of the most important gifts we can ever offer each other.” CPP believes this. CPP offers a collective of stories from the beginning of time, and from all over the world. CPP offers those who have been incarcerated the power of story to reimagine their lives,making good, living into a new future.
https://www.amazon.com/Stories-We-Live-Personal-Making/dp/1572301880/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3PT2PWKUYG6KG&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.O41Xjpl0r3e_npKWHDqIULHucxGNH2du2gbPjBERj9J9V2DF4be61RH2t4UxiAzbgdtmP422Tk67ovaZkD9Vy3pVVfoeRyIZctHXzip8b3A.fNmrdjcoHr3lGQ6_SLQe1d71NsLvmQL4Xv5SaVFpg-s&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+stories+we+live+by+dan+mcadams&qid=1746383808&sprefix=the+stories+we+live+by+%2Caps%2C118&sr=8-1
Shadd Maruna’s “research shows that criminals who desist from crime have constructed powerful narratives that aided them in making sense of their pasts, finding fulfillment in productive behaviors, and feeling in control of their future.Borrowing from the field of narrative psychology, Maruna argues that to truly understand offenders, we must understand the stories that they tell—and that inturn this story-making process has the capacity to transform lives.” Maruna’s research explains what CPP has long believed, and what motivates our practice. People need stories. We believe in the magic of stories to empower and change lives. CPP shares the stories of history and culture,drawing those who have experienced incarceration into communal stories that will rescript their lives and their futures.
CPP relies on PPI for much of its data. Everything from national to state, from racial and ethnic demographics to educational data and more, PPI reports.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/
“The Prison Industry maps the range of ways in which private corporations, often with their government partners, make money off incarceration. It further details the gross extraction of wealth from incarcerated people and their families, who have been brutalized by over-policing, mass incarceration, and mass surveillance.” For CPP, this reinforces our policies that those incarcerated and formerly incarcerated will NEVER pay for our paper. It will always be given away free. Moreover, while CPP is printed only for educational reasons, the use of tablets as a money maker for private industry in incarceration, makes CPP doubly cautious. Our purpose is to serve, and to make lives better, with no ulterior motives, or “negative” side.
https://www.amazon.com/Prison-Industry-How-Works-Profits/dp/1620978393/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.hBPdwCwEJp1PFkCk5vQy8A.2q4p3mwAGJTaPW3pbGACJHW38qxlPDISbUBYflApcbQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=9781620978399&qid=1746390987&sr=8-1
Paula Paul articulates how children’s communal stories creates adults that navigate our culture well. These stories are vital to integrating and being a part of society. Children who miss these stories remain on the outskirts. CPP works to bring those on the fringes back into society through the power of story, even children’s stories.
Calasso, a polymath, is also an unrepentant romantic. He believes in the power of ideas, of print, of publishing, and of story. This small book packs a wallop. It will change how the current fascination with image and with the disposable is questioned by the longevity of the printed word and with ideas that transcend. Required reading for anyone looking to change the world.
This article is very important to CPP. It tells a story, of children, minority children, whose inability to access literacy support, puts them on the pipeline prison. “In a study done by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in 20other12, researchers found that students who are not reading proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of school without a diploma… accounting for roughly 63% of students who fail to graduate high school according to this study. These rates are even worse for children in families from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
The connection between literacy, dropout rates, and incarceration is one that has been made before. If students who are reading below grade level or have below-basic skills by third and fourth grade are more likely to dropout of high school, and high school dropouts are more likely to be incarcerated, then it stands to reason that students who are reading below grade level are at risk of entering a pipeline that takes them from elementary school to prison.” CPP writes at a 5th-6th-grade level, to address both reading and cultural literacy. CPP meets those incarcerated where they are, and slowly builds skills and a reservoir of knowledge to bolster their confidence and prepare them to take advantage of educational opportunities and raise their chances of post-carceral success.
https://readingpartners.org/blog/literacy-support-can-reduce-incarceration-rates/
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