In American Teacher: Heroes in the Classroom, Katrina Fried's subjects inspire optimism for the future. Her homage to 50 classroom mentors is an appropriately weighty volume, featuring interviews, stories and full-page photos of educators and their students. All teach in public or charter public schools, and their classroom experience ranges from two to 52 years. Some came from privilege, others from poverty; all are committed to teaching. From the "Rappin' Mathematician" of Escondido, Calif., to the multimedia teacher in South Burlington, Vt., they can all boast of highly successful students. Most have won formal recognition, from "Teacher of the Year" in their districts or states, to a Presidential Award for Excellence and the National Medal for the Arts.
You'll want to give a favorite teacher this book--and you'll wish you could enroll in one of these classrooms yourself. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco