Among Schoolchildren

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Among School Children is 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.”  —New York Times Book Review

Tracy Kidder—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine and the extraordinary national bestseller House—spent nine months in Mrs. Zajac's fifth-grade classroom in the depressed "Flats" of Holyoke, Massachusetts. For an entire year he lived among twenty schoolchildren and their indomitable, compassionate teacher—sharing their joys, their catastrophes, and their small but essential triumphs. 

As a result, he has written a revealing, remarkably poignant account of education in America.

Tracy Kidder -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine and the extraordinary national bestseller House -- spent nine months in Mrs. Zajac's fifth-grade classroom in the depressed "Flats" of Holyoke, Massachusetts. For an entire year he lived among twenty schoolchildren and their indomitable, compassionate teacher -- sharings their joys, their catastrophes, and their small but essential triumphs. As a result, he has written a revealing, remarkably poignant account of education in America . . . and his most memorable, emotionally charged, and important book to date.

“Among School Children is 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.” - New York Times Book Review

"Splendid. . . smooth, informal, extraordinarily readable. . . . A book as exciting as it is eye-opening." - Chicago Sun-Times

"Erupts with passionate life." - USA Today

"Kidder's close observations tie us into the emotional networks that make up classroom life. . . . A wonderful, compassionate book about teaching." - Chicago Tribune

"Kidder brilliantly illuminates the reasons for hope and the reasons for despair that sit side by side, or share a desk, in schoolrooms across the nation." - Newsday