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Rating: 
Summary: It still reads the same over a year later....
Review: I just re-read ORDINARY RESURRECTIONS and wanted to update my review....the book is just wonderful....and full of such hope! Like other reviewers, I heard Mr. Kozol's interview on National Public Radio during my commute home and was completely enchanted by his stories of Pineapple and her friends in Mott Haven. I ordered the book from amamzon.com and devoured it in two sittings. I cannot remember when a book moved me as much as this one. I'm not sure what gifts God gave Jonathan Kozol, but one of them is true compassion and insight without judgment or pretense. I was continually amazed, as was Kozol, at these children's tenderness, kindness, their incredible gift of insight and their wide-eyed innocence. At the back of the book, there is an address for St. Ann's Church. I will be sending them a check...for St. Ann's Scholars...for Pineapple and Elio and Mother Martha and all the children and caretakers who perform miracles day in and day out. This should be required reading for not only present/future teachers, it should be required reading for the human race. I hope Kozol and his kids win the Pulitzer/Nobel/and any other available award! Read this book...you will be richer for it.
Rating: 
Summary: overrated
Review: I really have nothing good to say about this book. Maybe I don't like the book because my chest doesn't hold a bleeding heart. That probably is the case. First of all, what is Kozol's purpose for writing the book? What is he trying to prove? Of course educational situation in slum neighborhoods is poor. Is this a secret? I feel bad for anyone who made this revelation after reading the book. Another complaint would be how Kozol throws the term segregation around as liberally as he does. The students he meets with are not the victims of segregation. Segretation is the forced separation of two things. At best, the residents of Mott Haven are victims of economic segregation. Unfortunately, those people have victimized themselves - they are the victims of their own ways of life. There are no men in the neighborhood - boo hoo, let's shed some tears. Where have all the men gone? - to jail for selling drugs. In short, you get what you deserve. In the end, there are incredible problems with this book and I did not find it enjoyable at all. I suppose I'm supposed to feel sympathetic for these people, but we all control our own destinies. If those youngsters decide to get an education and get themselves out of the neighborhood, then I'll applaud. They can sell drugs like everyone else and end up in prison and get their just deserts for their activity and continue the cycle. Open your eyes when you read this book and realize that Kozol has filled this book with liberalized rants and tears. The only people that I feel for are those who are forced to read this drivel. The system will never be perfect and remember, not everyone can graduate and be a doctor or a lawyer. We need to have the local McDonald's and the local gas station staffed too.
Rating:
Summary: Ordinary Resurrections: Extraordinary Victories
Review: Jonathan Kozol, author of Ordinary Resurrections, was a teacher in the 1960's until, legend has it, he was fired for reading a Langston Hughes poem to his students in inner-city Boston. Since his forced departure from the classroom, Kozol has been a student of public education, focusing on the inequities of quality of education between the haves and the have-nots. His books include: Death at an Early Age; The Night is Dark and I am far From Home; Rachel and her Children; Savage Inequalities; and Amazing Graces. Kozol describes his current work: "This is a book about a group of children whom I've come to know during their early years of life, not in the infant years but in the ones just after, when they start to go to school and poke around into the world and figure out what possibilities for hope and happiness it holds. Most of these children live within a section of the South Bronx called Mott Haven which, for much of the past decade, was the nation's epicenter for the plague of pediatric and maternal AIDS and remains one of the centers of an epidemic of adult and pediatric asthma that has swept across the inner-city populations of our nation in these years." At the end of the book's introduction, Kozol says: "I'm grateful to the priest and congregation of St. Ann's (Church - of Morrisania - Episcopalian) for giving me the privilege to share the lives of children here...But most of all I'm grateful to the children, who have been so kind and generous to me, as they have been to many people who do nothing to deserve their loyalty and love, which aren't for sale and never can be earned, and who, with bashful voices, tiny fingers, sometimes unintended humor, and wise hearts, illuminate the lives of everyone who know them." Kozol followed the children of P.(ublic) S.(chool) 30 and the eighty children who participate St. Ann's after school program for two years. Their stories and the stories of their parents, teachers and caretakers are anything but ordinary. These children will crawl right into your heart and take up residence. It's been a long time since a book has chronicled so many real-life miracles performed on a daily basis by ordinary people who happen to posses extraordinary compassion, kindness and caring. I challenge anyone who reads Ordinary Resurrections to remain unmoved by Pineapple's brashness, Elio's false bravado, Ariel's insight, Mother Martha (St. Ann's priest) and her dog, or Katrice's adroitness in overseeing the church's kitchen. Some of the stories are uplifting; some will break your heart. Although the book drags a bit in the middle when Kozol attempts to explain educational philosophies in laymen's terms, he never leaves the children long enough to make the intellectual content too boring. If there is justice for Kozol and the children of Mott Haven, this should garner a lot of attention and win awards. Words like Pulitzer, Nobel, and National Book Award will fit nicely behind the title. Ordinary Resurrections should be required reading for all teachers and the rest of the human race, too. It's that good. Kudos to Kozol and his kids. They deserve every good thing in life! Terry Mathews, Reviewer
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