Oh, how we embraced publishing students' work in the early years of writer's workshop! Many schools had a "publishing center" where parent volunteers came to type and bind student work. Covers were cardboard, decorated with wallpaper samples, held together with duct tape.  Although the school where I taught did not have its own center, I painstakingly bound my students' books with dental floss so they'd last forever.

Dental floss eventually gave way to spiral binding machines, and all too...