Radical Reflections: Passionate Opinions on Teaching, Learning, and Living
With lighthearted anecdotes, poems, letters, and other writings, the renowned Australian children's book author entices teachers to do more writing themselves and rejects the "skills-and-drills" mentality in language arts teaching. Fox, an advocate of the "whole language" movement, fiercely condemns the use of basal readers in reading instruction classes. Their dullness, she maintains, causes students to avoid reading altogether. Fox recommends instead that real books be read and real language used. She advocates stories that bring teacher and student together in a relationship to experience genuine feeling, laughter, and fun. A superb writer, she constructs an excellent case, and surely any child would like to be a member of her reading/writing class. Her ideas are jotted down in a rather disorganized fashion, but her writing is fresh. For most public and academic libraries.- Arla Lindgren, St. John's Univ., New YorkCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.