Among Schoolchildren

Name: Among Schoolchildren
Brand: Brilliance Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Tracy Kidder
ISBN: 9781423359173

Author: Tracy Kidder

Narrator: Stephen Yankee

Unabridged: 8 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Published: 10/02/2008

Categories: Nonfiction, Social Science

Synopsis

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author's classic, "brilliantly illuminated" account of education in America (The New York Times Book Review). Mrs. Zajac is feisty, funny, and tough. She likes to call herself an "old-lady teacher." (She is thirty-four.) Around Kelly School, she is infamous for her discipline: "She is mean, bro," says one of her students. But children love her, and so will the reader of this extraordinarily moving book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of House and The Soul of a New Machine. Tracy Kidder spent nine months in Mrs. Zajac's fifth-grade classroom in a depressed area of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Living among the twenty schoolchildren and their indomitable teacher, he shared their joys, catastrophes, and small but essential triumphs. His resulting New York Times bestseller is a revelatory and remarkably poignant account of an inner-city school that "erupts with passionate life," and a close-up examination of what is wrong—and right—with education in America (USA Today). "More than a book about needy children and a valiant teacher; it is full of the author's genuine love, delight and celebration of the human condition. He has never used his talent so well." —The New York Times

About Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and many other literary prizes. The author of Strength in What Remains, My Detachment, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder lives in Massachusetts.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ruth on September 04, 2012

I was given this book by a teacher that I worked with who told me that it was great. Newly retired, I put it on my bookshelf to read at a future date. I took it out the other day because I have had it for a while and I wanted to read it so that I could return it to her. I am glad that I did! Having......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on July 14, 2008

This book was recommended to me by a co-worker. Tracy Kidder is a Pulitzer prize-winning author (for Soul of a New Machine) with a unique style. He basically picks someone interesting, and follows them around for a year or so and records everything they do. He combines that with a lot of research a......more

Goodreads review by sydney on July 02, 2007

Oookay. I wanted to like this because it's about a teacher, but I couldn't. Apparently it's a true story about a year in the life of a fifth grade teacher, Christine Zajac, but it's written by Tracy Kidder in a third-person limited voice. This immediately made me want to know what Kidder's methodolo......more

Goodreads review by Nickolas on April 03, 2022

boring but I miss the book and all of the great characters......more

Goodreads review by Sangwon on December 07, 2020

I think this is my favorite book of the year, by a large margin. I found this book at Powell's Bookstore in Portland OR as a pretty beaten-up used copy, for $5.95. An absolute steal! I have always adored Tracy Kidder's writing, but this one resonated with me as it touched on a subject I am passionate......more