Over a span of more than 30 years and nine books, Kozol has chronicled the terrible effects of poverty on America's youngest victims. A former teacher, Kozol's first book, Death at an Early Age, portrayed the Boston public school system as a laboratory for despair which choked all the promise of its students. Eight books followed, each examining the impact of poverty on this nation's children. To write it, Kozol spent two years in Mott Haven - talking with children and listening to them. The children Kozol writes about have a sweetness and an innocence that makes the bleakness of their surroundings even more unforgivable.
People walk the streets like they're already dead.
His moving first-person accounts, make us see the poor as individuals, not as social problems. But, Kozol is not a poverty voyeur. He keeps in contact with the people he's written about. And, using royalties from his book sales, he has established a foundation to serve low-income families, children in hunger and families with severe medical emergencies. What he says must be heard.