Top+Non-Fiction

= Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago= by Lealan Jones This book shows the unfamiliar reader what poverty really is, how it thinks, acts, looks like, and feels from the words and experiences of children. LeAlan and Lloyd are children growing up in a very adult world, and one is reminded just how young they actually are when you listen to the recordings of their initial broadcasts. Knowing that they and their families are real people, how can you read this book and feel nothing? The tragic part is, those who most need their eyes opened to the state of poverty and violence in our nation will most likely never read this book. For those of us who do, may your eyes be a little wider, your heart a little deeper, and your spirit be called to action.

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=The Freedom Writers Diary = by Freedom Writers The true story behind **//The Freedom Writers Diary//** began in the fall of 1994, at Woodrow Wilson [|High School] in Long Beach, California, when an idealistic twenty-three-year-old high [|school] teacher, Erin Gruwell, faced her first group of high-risk teenagers. These teens, a diverse mix of students from some of the roughest neighborhoods in Long Beach, soon made it apparent to the young teacher that they were not interested in learning a lot of facts that wouldn’t help them survive their own life situations. Fortunately, however, for all concerned, a monumental event occurred when Ms Gruwell found a caricature of an Afro-American student and was able to turn the situation into a character building session comparing the found picture which those caricatures drawn of the Jews during the Holocaust. As the session progressed, many of the [|students] began to reveal their personal anger and prejudices, as well as, their own tales of abuse including the battle scars that they had received in their own war of survival.

=The Translator= by Daoud Hari “//The Translator//, by Daoud Hari, a native Darfurian, may be the biggest small book of this year, or any year. In roughly 200 pages of simple, lucid prose, it lays open the Darfur genocide more intimately and powerfully than do a dozen books by journalists or academic experts. Hari and his co-writers achieve this in a voice that is restrained, generous, gentle and—astonishingly—humorous.” — //Washington Post Book World//