Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope

Jonathan Kozol's books have become touchstones of the American conscience. Unlike his previous books, however, Ordinary Resurrections is almost entirely narrative and takes us into the fascinating details of daily life as he has lived it with young children who befriended him over the course of several years. Like Amazing Grace, this book describes the children of New York's South Bronx, but it is a markedly different book in mood and vantage point. Here, we see life through the eyes of the children, not, as Kozol puts it, from the perspective of a grown-up man encumbered by a Harvard education. Here, too, we meet some dedicated and inspired teachers in an underfunded but upbeat public elementary school, and we return once more to St. Ann's Church and meet the parents and religious figures in the children's lives.