Historically, there have been many famous chess grandmasters. These include Garry Kasparov, Magnus Carlsen, Bobby Fisher, Anatoly Karpov, and Emanuel Lasker. One name, however, is rarely, if ever, included on the list of chess grandmasters. He has been overlooked, if not ignored, by the chess game industry. His name is Maurice Ashley. He deserves to be famous but isn’t. He is now! This due in large part to the publication of a new autobiographical picture book titled The Life-Changing Magic of Chess: A Beginners Guide with Grandmaster Maurice Ashley (Ashley, 2024).
This article shares a teaching tip highlighting the remarkable life of Maurice Ashley. The tip consists of two interrelated parts. One part is a teacher interactive read aloud of the entertaining and informative picture book biography of Maurice Ashley. The other part is What’s New?, a reader response instructional strategy students use during and after the interactive read aloud. This strategy is grounded in reader response theory. It is designed to help all students generate new knowledge, by themselves and with others, from written responses to a shared text. When used together, this teaching tip illustrates an example of literature-based and strategy-driven instruction.
We begin by sharing some professional background about each of us to provide a context for this article. Next, we share a summary of the picture book autobiography of Maurice Ashley. Then, we describe the teaching tip, including theoretical underpinnings of the instructional strategy and procedures for implementing the teaching tip in the classroom. We end with some thoughts about moving forward.
Professional Background
William P. Bintz: I am a professor of literacy education at a public university in a large midwestern state. My personal interests, teaching topics, and research interests focus on using reading and writing as instructional tools to teach important content area information across the curriculum K-12, often referred to as Reading and Writing across the Content Areas. Specifically, I use picture books, especially award-winning picture books, in my classes to teach standards-based, content-area themes and topics across English Language Arts, Social Studies, Mathematics, and Science.
I use a variety of professional resources to find, read, and use high-quality and award-winning picture books. As a literacy educator, I use the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) website to view picture books that have won awards like The Orbis Pictus Award and the Charlotte Huck Award. For social studies, I use the National Council of Social Studies (NCSS) website to view picture books that have won the Notable Social Studies Book Award and the Carter G. Woodson Book Award. For mathematics, I use the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) to view picture books that have won The Mathical Book Prize. For science, I use the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) to view the columns Teaching Science Through Trade Books and Outstanding Science Trade Books for students K 12.
I particularly enjoy finding and reading picture book biographies of historical figures who should be famous but aren’t. I enjoy these biographies for two reasons: One, I am inspired by accomplished people who have been overlooked, if not ignored for some reason, by history. Two, I enjoy student responses to the picture books.
For example, after reading aloud these picture books in class, students often make comments like, “This person was fascinating and highly accomplished. Why didn’t we learn about him/her before now?” I usually shrug my shoulders and tell the truth: “I don’t know.” What I do know is that I enjoy reading about historical figures who have been overlooked by history. Maurice Ashley is one of these historical figures.
Shabnam Moini Chaghervand: I am an Adjunct Professor in the School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum (TLC) in the College of Education, Health, and Human Services (EHHS) at Kent State University. I am also an Early Childhood Teacher at the Kent State Child Development Center (CDC). My research and professional interests include the use of picture books and postmodern picture books to teach reading, as well as content area across the curriculum, K-12. I share an interest in picture books that reveal rather than conceal historical figures for their accomplishments. I, too, was delighted to discover the picture book on Maurice Ashley.
Picture Book Biography
The Life-Changing Magic of Chess: A Beginners Guide with Grandmaster Maurice Ashley is an informative and inspiring picture book autobiography by Maurice Ashley, “a Jamaican American chess player who was the first African American to earn an international Grandmaster chess title.” He was born in Jamaica in 1966 and influenced by his brother who played chess.
Maurice felt like he was a magician when he played chess. Ironically, one of his chess heroes was Mikhail Tal, known as the “Magician.” He was a great tutor. In 1960, Mikhail became the youngest world champion in the history of chess at age 23. Maurice soon became a strategic chess player. He learned introductory moves like “The Scholar’s Mate.”
Maurice and his family moved to New York when he was 12 years old. Maurice lived in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. He was eight years old when he saw his first chess set. He knew right away that he wanted to learn how to play chess. Fortunately, he met a boy from Haiti who also liked chess. They played all the time and Maurice developed a passion for chess. His passion was fueled as he started to play chess outdoors in the parks of New York City. Maurice also played in tournaments in the United States and cities around the world. In the process, he learned how to win and how to lose, although he won much more than he lost. In the end, in 1999 Maurice became the first Black Chess Grandmaster. In 2016, he was inducted into the United States Chess Hall of Fame.
In addition to an inspiring story, this picture book includes a biography of Maurice Ashley, and a glossary of important chess vocabulary. It is a fascinating story that will appeal to readers of all ages.
Teaching Tip
This teaching tip illustrates an example of literature-based reading and strategy-driven instruction. It involves an interactive read aloud integrated with a reader response instructional strategy. Together, they are designed to help students generate new knowledge of a shared text. We discuss theoretical underpinnings of the instructional strategy, describe reasons we value this strategy, and procedures for implementing the teacher tip in the classroom.
Theoretical Underpinnings
Reader response is an integral part of the reading process. It serves several important learning functions. One, it allows readers to make their thinking visible to themselves. Two, it also allows readers to share and discuss their visible thinking with others in literature circle groups. This discussion allows all readers hear and understand multiple perspectives of a shared text.
Value of Strategy
We always want our students to personally experience instructional strategies as part of classroom instruction. What’s New? is an effective strategy to use with autobiography, biography, and other literary genres. We value this strategy for several reasons. One, we value and support the explicit message this strategy sends to readers; that is, the purpose of reading is for readers to learn new information. Two, students can learn new information not only from the text but also from each other. For example, What’s New? for one student may not be new to another student. In effect, the text and all the students are sources for learning new information. Three, based on our own experience, we have witnessed students, including our struggling readers, express and display a degree of excitement about the possibility of learning something new from their reading. This strategy both stimulates and motivates student excitement.
Procedure
From a practical perspective, this teaching tip can be implemented in five stages: preparation, organization, implementation, literature circle discussion, and reflection.
Stage 1: Preparation
To prepare for the interactive read aloud, we read the picture book in advance. While reading, we identify episodic changes in the story. These changes could include the introduction of a new problem or character, a different setting, a change in time, etc. We mark each episodic change with a post-it and attach it to the appropriate picture book page. Now, we are prepared for one of us to conduct the interactive read aloud in class.
Stage 2: Organization
We organize students into small-group literature circles (3-5) and distribute a copy of the strategy to each student. Next, we display the strategy on the white board or on a PowerPoint slide. Then, we discuss the how (procedure) and the why (purpose) of the strategy with the class. When we receive a “thumbs up” from all students, we move to the interactive read aloud.
Stage 3: Implementation
First, we distribute a copy of the What’s New? sheet to every student. Next, we display this strategy on the white board or on a PowerPoint slide and discuss it as a class. Then, we start to read aloud the picture book biography, pausing at episodic changes in the story. These changes could include the introduction of a new problem or character, a different setting, a change in time, etc. We pause at each episodic change for about 3-5 minutes for students to make comments, ask questions, and/or record new information in the rectangular boxes on the What’s New? sheet, one box for each episodic change. After reading, we invite students to complete the What’s New? strategy and prepare to share their new information with other students in literature circle discussions.
Stage 4: Literature Circle Discussion
After the read-aloud, students share and discuss their written responses with others in literature circles. This social experience is an opportunity for students to extend beyond new understandings from the text, by hearing and discussing new knowledge generated by other students. One student characterized the experience as valuable and fun. He stated, “I loved talking about my new ideas with others in my group. I also loved hearing the new ideas from other students. I just learned a lot of new stuff.”
Stage 5: Reflection
As a culminating event, we ask students to write and share with the class their reflections on the whole experience. We view reflection as an inquiry-based approach to inform both learning and teaching. Specifically, it allows students and teachers to step back and think about their thinking, examine their learning and teaching, and chart new paths for becoming more effective and efficient learners and teachers.
Moving Forward
We have enjoyed collaborating on the development of this teaching tip. We hope to implement it in our own classrooms in the near future. For now, we are moving forward, but there is still much thinking to do.
For instance, we want to think more about the role of assessment. In general, we value and use different forms of assessment, depending on the nature of and purpose of the strategy. The nature of the What’s New? strategy is grounded in and driven by the notion of inquiry. The purpose of this strategy is to situate students as inquirers and thoughtful responders to a shared text. From this perspective, the purpose for reading is not to find answers in the text to close-ended questions about the text, e.g., Who is the main character in the story? How was the problem resolved? Rather, the purpose of reading is to inquire, often characterized as reading as inquiry. What’s New? is a reader response strategy based on the notion of reading as inquiry. Instead of answers, it invites students to write thoughtful and meaningful responses based on their personal understanding of the text. It also raises an important question: How do we assess student responses?
Presently, we are thinking about developing criteria, written as add questions, to assess student responses. Here are some examples.
To what extent…
- Does the response connect to the read-aloud text?
- Does the response indicate comprehension of text?
- Does the response seem reasonably genuine?
- Does the response reflect a substantive topic?
- Does the response have potential for further inquiry?
These questions represent our best thinking so far. We plan to refine these and other questions as we move forward.
For now, we hope this article will do for readers what this new picture book about Maurice Ashley did for us. It motivated us, taught us new information, and inspired us to read more picture book biographies about people who should be more famous, but aren’t. Readers of all ages will enjoy this new picture book and want to read others like it. To that end, we recommend (and cite below) The Most Valuable Skills in Chess, Chess for Success: Using an Old Game to Build New Strengths in Children and Teens, Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess for Beginning and Intermediate Players, How to Beat Your Dad at Chess, and How to Play Chess for Kids.
Happy Reading!
Literature Cited
Ashley, Maurice. Chess for Success: Using an Old Game to Build New Strengths in Children and Teens. Harmony Books, 2007.
—. The Life-Changing Magic of Chess: A Beginners Guide with Grandmaster Maurice Ashley. Magic Cat Publishing, 2024.
—. Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess for Beginning and Intermediate Players. MacMillan, 1997.
—. The Most Valuable Skills in Chess (Chess for Beginners). Gambit Publications, 2022.
Chandler, Murray. How to Beat Your Dad at Chess. Gambit Publications, 1998.
Martin, Jessica E. How to Play Chess for Kids. Callisto Kids, 2019.
Works Cited
Maurice Ashley. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maurice-Ashley, June 12, 2025.
What’s New?
Learn more about the authors on our 2026 Contributors page.
MEJ 