L. Todd Rose and Katherine Ellison, authors of Square Peg, on tour March 2013

About Square Peg: My Story and What it Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, & Out-of-the-Box Thinkers

Hardcover: 256 pages

Publisher: Hyperion (March 5, 2013)

From high school dropout to Harvard— scientist, educator, and thought-leader Todd Rose’s learning curve was complex.

After being labeled “gifted but quirky” and belatedly diagnosed with ADHD, Todd Rose fought an uphill battle to reach his potential in our cookie-cutter educational system. In SQUARE PEG, he recounts his fall-and-rise journey with humor, humility, and wisdom, sharing memories about what it meant to be a child who thinks and learns differently.

SQUARE PEG is part memoir, part prescription, and part call to action. Rose, drawing on his own research as well as compelling findings in neuroscience, psychology, and education, demonstrates how our rigid “factory model” of education must be adapted to emphasize the individual learner and nurture the full range of talent in our classrooms.

Parents, teachers, and individuals will discover many opportunities for themselves and their children by embracing simple but effective techniques that are emerging from the new science of learning. Rose expertly advocates for a convergence of modern learning science with new digital technologies, explaining how (if we make the right choices) it has the power to transform education as we know it. He includes tips, sidebars, and ends each chapter with specific lessons and action points.

In these times of falling scores and failing schools, a reassuringly positive, fact-based, and deeply personal book like SQUARE PEG is perfectly timed to inspire, instruct, and change lives.

About the authors

L. Todd Rose is a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he teaches a course on educational neuroscience. He is also cochair of the Connecting the Mind, Brain, and Education institute at Harvard.

Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer Prize–winning former foreign correspondent and author of five books, including Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention, a memoir of a year after both she and her son were diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.