Professional Book Reviews: Transformative Texts

The six books brought together in this column provide us with ways to critically consider and re-evaluate our beliefs about inequities in education, e.g., the education of bilingual, bicultural children, and African American children, the tangible challenges associated with urban education, the re-evaluation of reading and writing workshops, and the responsibility of teacher education programs to meet the needs of teachers and schools in today’s educational climate. The texts reviewed in this column go beyond critique to provide the reader with hope. While helping us broaden and deepen our understanding about language, literacy, race, and the education of teachers, they also describe ideas teachers can experiment with and detail the very real and positive impact these ideas can have upon our practices and out students’ learning.—