Book excerpt: Penguin Classics presents John Steinbeck’s classic tale as an eBook enhanced with ten exclusive video clips featuring students responses, questions for classroom discussions, and an American Dream assignment Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men remains one of America's most widely read and taught novels. An unlikely pair, George and Lennie, two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression, grasp for their American Dream. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him. Of Mice and Men: Teacher’s Edition includes the following: • An introduction and suggested further reading by Susan Shillinglaw, a professor of English at San Jose State University and Scholar-in-Residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas • The poem “To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November 1785” by Robert Burns (the original source of Steinbeck’s title Of Mice and Men) • The 1962 Nobel Banquet Speech by John Steinbeck • An exclusive audio interview with award-winning actor James Earl Jones on his stage performances in Of Mice and Men • Ten exclusive videos of students on major themes from the novel tied to group discussion questions included in the eBook, and an American Dream assignment, for the ultimate educational experience