An independent press in Wichita, Kansas

Two novels about young people at the moment the ground shifts under them.

Both are taught in classrooms. One is also a full-cast audio drama that won the 2025 Audie Award for Young Adult.

Hear a sample scene Meet the books
2025 Audie Award, Young Adult AudioFile Earphones Award 2025 IPPY Outstanding Book of the Year, Audiobook Kirkus Reviews
Cover of Maggie Vaults Over the Moon by Grant Overstake: a girl pole vaulting over a full moon above a Kansas farm Cover of The Real Education of TJ Crowley: Coming of Age on the Redline, a boy on a bicycle beside a red line, with the 2025 Audie Award winner seal

The books

The Real Education of TJ Crowley cover

The Real Education of TJ Crowley

Coming of Age on the Redline. Ages 13 and up, grades 7-12. Novel, full-cast audio drama, and Scriptbook, by Grant Overstake and May Wuthrich.

Wichita, 1968, the summer after Dr. King was killed. A line runs through the city, one street from thirteen-year-old TJ Crowley's house. When the new Fair Housing law brings a Black doctor's family onto his block, everything TJ thought he knew about his neighbors, his family, and himself comes apart.

The page gives you what TJ is thinking. The audio gives you the room he is thinking it in.

Contains historically accurate racially offensive language; best in guided settings.

Buy the Scriptbook, $19.99 All three formats
Maggie Vaults Over the Moon cover

Maggie Vaults Over the Moon

Second Edition. Ages 10 and up, grades 5-8. No profanity or sexual content. Novel and audiobook narrated by Tavia Gilbert.

A car crash takes Maggie Steele's brother at harvest time, and the future she'd pictured closes. Life on the family's Kansas wheat farm keeps moving. Maggie doesn't, until she finds the pole vault, a sport that asks for everything she has.

"A fine YA novel about perseverance in sports and in life."Kirkus Reviews
Buy the book, $12.99 Book and audiobook

Listen first

Hear the drama that won the Audie.

Co-author May Wuthrich directed fifteen actors and the ARISE Ensemble in the full-cast audio drama of The Real Education of TJ Crowley. Hear a sample scene, then stream the whole drama where you already listen.

Sample scenes, original cast
Spotify stream Audible download Apple Books download

For teachers, coaches, and librarians

Built for the room you teach in.

Read-and-listen instruction, free performance cuttings, standards-aligned history, and a book that doubles as an award at the track. Classroom sets and team sets carry volume pricing.

Teach TJ Crowley

Historical background on redlining and the 1968 Fair Housing Act, standards alignment, and discussion materials for English, social studies, and humanities classrooms.

Teaching resources

The Redline Scenes

Free, timed scene cuttings from the Scriptbook, cleared for competition and classroom use at no charge. On the EdTA Thespys Approved Materials List.

Request the cuttings packet

Maggie Awards for coaches

Coaches and clubs hand out Maggie Vaults Over the Moon at meets, camps, and clinics as recognition for the best effort of the day. Quantity discounts.

Give a Maggie Award

Catholic schools and parishes

Both titles read cleanly for Catholic classrooms. Maggie was selected for the Wichita Diocese Catholic Schools Battle of the Books. We are a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers.

Catholic school materials
Ask about classroom pricing

For publishers

Two services. The writing stays yours.

SecondRead

A finished manuscript read for consistency and factual accuracy, returned in days as a page-cited report. It reads and reports. It never rewrites.

From $300 per manuscript. ACP member rate $200.

See what the report looks like

BookLab

A good book that has gone quiet, repositioned so today's readers, librarians, and AI-powered search can find it again. The author's words stay theirs.

Built for Catholic and independent publishers. Quoted per title.

How BookLab works

About the press

We publish a small number of books and stay with them for a long time.

Grain Valley Publishing is an independent press in Wichita, Kansas, founded by Grant Overstake, a former Miami Herald and Wichita Eagle journalist. We are a bridge publisher, at home in the public square and in the life of faith. Our books are read in Catholic schools and public schools, on teams, in classrooms, and at kitchen tables. Through The Real Education Project, our nonprofit arm, we bring listening-centered education into schools, libraries, and community settings.

About Grain Valley Publishing Invite Grant to speak