This will be the first of several book reviews that are forthcoming since I've really hit my pleasure-reading stride after finishing the semester.
I had, up until a couple weeks ago, been a very, very bad potential teacher/education student because I had never read anything by Jonathan Kozol. Savage Inequalities is his most famous book, but I read Ordinary Resurrections after it was given to me as a gift.
It's a book about education, but it's even more about poverty and religion and spirituality. Kozol has a remarkable ability to paint portraits of real children without seeming patronizing, and without even seeming to be trying to describe them. He manages to bring the afterschool program he writes about to vivid life, even though he does an equally powerful job describing the desolate environment surrounding the program.
I would be tempted to suggest this book be read in tandem with Random Family, which I read earlier this year (feels like years ago at this point). Both tackle the South Bronx, and are powerful in their results.
Posted by waking slow at January 3, 2005 10:27 PM