The Real Education of TJ Crowley
Coming of Age on the Redline
Read his thoughts. Hear his neighborhood.
Wichita, July 1968. A 13-year-old boy, a red line down his street, and a family moving in next door.
The Real Education of TJ Crowley: Coming of Age on the Redline won the 2025 Audie Award in the Young Adult category.
Direct Publisher Price: $19.99 (regularly $22.99)
Available exclusively through this site.
Bulk and educational orders available.
At a Glance — Setting
Wichita, Kansas. Summer 1968.
About the Story
Set in Wichita during the summer of 1968, the story follows thirteen-year-old TJ Crowley through a divided neighborhood, a volatile home, and a newly integrated school. When a Black family moves in next door, TJ has to face what he was taught about race and loyalty against what he sees for himself.
TJ's journey turns on noticing contradictions, recognizing the humanity of people he was raised to keep at a distance, and working out when to act when silence feels safer.
The story leaves questions open, which is what makes it work for guided discussion.
How the two editions work together
A script normally strips out interiority. Dialogue only, no inner voice, which is the wrong shape for a coming-of-age story.
This one keeps both. TJ’s first-person narration is printed as prose, running between the character cues, with fifteen other voices coming in around it. On the page, a scene reads like this: TJ tells you what he sees and what he is not saying, then his mother speaks, then the man at the door speaks, then TJ tells you what he made of it.
Read it and you are in his head. Play the audio at the same time and the room fills in around you. His mother is in the kitchen. The sirens are outside. The news is on.
The page gives you what TJ is thinking. The audio gives you the room he is thinking it in.
• Full-Cast Audio Drama
The audio drama is by Grant Overstake and May Wuthrich, who co-authored, produced, and directed it. Fifteen actors perform it, with sound design and original gospel music by the ARISE Ensemble. It won the 2025 Audie Award for Best Young Adult Audiobook and an AudioFile Earphones Award. Educators have called it "a movie for the ears."
• Scriptbook Edition
The complete script as performed, adapted from the novel by Grant Overstake and May Wuthrich. Bonus materials are included for classrooms, discussion groups, and individual readers.
Learning Through Story
The Real Education of TJ Crowley shows moral growth as uneven and slow, shaped by fear and loyalty and the courage to see people clearly.
The story explores:
How inherited assumptions get questioned
What it takes to see a neighbor as a person instead of an idea
What integrity costs when silence is cheaper
The story opens space for conversation about how moral understanding develops under real pressure in real communities.
What People Are Saying
Industry & Award Recognition
“Performed by a gifted cast, this slice of our history stays with the listener.”
— AudioFile Magazine (Earphones Award)“The YA Audie winner The Real Education of TJ Crowley will sweep you away to the turbulent times of the Civil Rights Movement… Replete with a full cast and exceptional sound design.”
— Audible“Fast-paced, suspenseful, important, and revelatory.”
— Barnes & NobleEducators & Classroom Impact
“TJ Crowley led my students to ask mature, challenging questions about their own communities and moral choices. One of the best classroom experiences in my 17 years of teaching.”
— Amanda Harcus, Horace Mann Dual Language Magnet“This is a book that demands discussion.”
— Marguerite Penick-Parks, Ph.D., co-editor of Everyday White People“An invaluable classroom resource.”
— Jenna Chandler-Ward, Teaching While White
Where It’s Being Used
Classrooms & Schools
For teaching history and ethical decision-making in English, social studies, and humanities courses.
Libraries & Book Clubs
For readers who want to engage difficult questions together. Discussion guides available.
Community & Civic Programs
For shared listening built around empathy and belonging.
Adult Education
For readers who prefer narrative over abstraction when engaging social and moral questions.
Advisory Note
Ages 13 and up, grades 7-12. Contains historically accurate racially offensive language and depictions of racial injustice. Recommended for guided or facilitated settings.
Ordering Information
Direct Publisher Price: $19.99 (regularly $22.99)
Available through this page only.
Bulk orders, classroom sets, and volume pricing are available.
Educator discussion guides included with group orders.
For Catholic Schools & Parishes
TJ Crowley is not Catholic. His story still speaks to Catholic educators, because it sits close to the heart of Catholic social teaching: human dignity, solidarity, and the formation of conscience under pressure.
The slow work of noticing the gap between what we were taught and what we see, and choosing integrity when silence is safer, is formation. TJ does it in front of the reader.
For theology, English, and social studies classrooms. For parish book clubs, youth groups, and diocesan formation. Educator guides available for institutional partners.
About the Publisher
Grain Valley Publishing is an independent press in Wichita, Kansas. We publish stories that build empathy and historical understanding. Through The Real Education Project, we support listening-centered education in schools, libraries, and community settings.
