Ordinary Resurrections

April 3, 2000
A persistent voice of conscience, Kozol poses the question: do we want our schools to remain segregated and unequal? The National Book Award-winning education activist revisits Mott Haven, a poverty-stricken section of the South Bronx that was the setting for his two previous books, Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities. The tone here is more optimistic, partly because his extended conversations and interactions with children take place not only at public elementary schools, but also at a supportive after-school center run by St. Ann's Church, a neighborhood Episcopalian congregation that reaches out to the hungry and homeless. Ranging in age from six to 12, all of the children in Kozol's empathetic, leisurely portraits are black or Hispanic; some know hunger; many have lost at least one relative to AIDS; a large number of them see their fathers only when they visit them in prison. Many have asthma or other severe respiratory problems, which Kozol blames on the high density of garbage facilities in the area and on a waste incinerator that was not shut down until 1998 after protests by community activists, environmentalists and doctors. His sensitive profiles highlight these kids' resilience, quiet tenacity, eagerness to learn and high spirits, as well as the teachers' remarkable dedication despite sharp cutbacks in personnel and services; overcrowded, decaying buildings; and crime-riddled streets. Yet as Kozol makes piercingly clear, the students' "ordinary resurrections" can only go so far amid what he calls "apartheid education," a racially and economically segregated school system that in effect assigns disadvantaged children to constricted destinies. Major ad/promo; 11-city author tour.

August 4, 2000
YA-With warmth and compassion, Kozol tells of his continued visits with the children who attend the after-school program at St. Ann's Episcopal Church in the racially segregated, impoverished South Bronx. Surrounded by drugs and violence, these youngsters hold on to their optimism and innocence. Elio, described as "somewhat timid, almost happy, and attempting to be brave" tells him that "I can hear God crying-when I do something bad." The children listen to the author as well, sensing when he is troubled and reassuring him. The program is run by Mother Martha, an Episcopal priest educated at Radcliffe and a former trial lawyer, who doggedly works the system for her children, and by the grandmothers of the neighborhood. Kozol is well aware of what the future holds for most of these kids and rails against the injustices. However, he mostly relishes his relationship with them. Teens will be enriched and inspired by their stories, which fracture the stereotypes of the nightly news.-Jane S. Drabkin, Potomac Community Library, Woodbridge, VA

Copyright 2000 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2000
Social critic Kozol is still writing about America's underclass of urban children and our school's failure to teach them. Unlike his classic first book, Death at an Early Age (1967), which critiqued the dysfunctional environments in which such children are forced to live, this book is a loosely organized narrative that movingly describes their inner strength and amazing resilience despite very difficult lives. Between 1997 and 1999, the author followed a handful of children attending two South Bronx public schools as well as an after-school program sponsored by an Episcopalian church. Kozol is especially supportive of the after-school program, which he feels should be studied and replicated by all public schools. The book consists of three interwoven strands: stories of the children and their interactions with teachers and families, changes in the author's personal life, and social criticism addressing such hot issues as public spending priorities, the failure of prisons (where many of the children visit their fathers), and jargon-filled educator conferences that neglect real problems. For most academic and public libraries-and required reading for future teachers.-Jack Forman, San Diego Mesa Coll. Lib.

Starred review from March 15, 2000
Kozol has written about the South Bronx before, in "Savage Inequalities" (1991) and "Amazing Grace" (1996). But where those passionate screeds attacked the city of New York for the ways its schools and hospitals and public housing abuse and maltreat the children and adults of Mott Haven and other poor communities, here Kozol's focus is on the children themselves. "It's easy," he observes, "to forget how much of the existence of a seven-year-old child has to do with things that are not big at all. . . . . A narrow lens, I think, is often better than a wide one in discerning what a child's life is really like." This is Kozol's narrow lens, capturing conversations, primarily with children who attend the after-school program at St. Ann's Episcopal Church, but also with their parents and teachers, St. Ann's pastor, and the elderly neighborhood women who watch the after-school kids. This may be Kozol's most personal book: while he was celebrating the curiosity, joy, and generosity of the children of St. Ann's, he was dealing with the illnesses of his nonagenarian parents. Kozol retains his anger and contempt at the city's neglect of his small friends, but he takes a moment here to marvel at their silliness and sorrows, gentleness and bravery. ((Reviewed March 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)