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 review Mar 13, 2010
Received item in a very timely manner...would certainly recommend this seller to others...keep up the good work! God's blessings and prosperity to you!
 An Easy Read About a Complex World Feb 16, 2010
I ordered this book immediately after watching the movie. I wanted to know about the real kids behind the characters in the movie. I found that the movie actually does an incredible job of giving you a real feel for the Freedom Writers by using actual quotes from the diaries in this written collection.
The book was more satisfying than the movie, in that it followed the Freedom Writers through all 4 years of High School, and through more tolerance-building experiences. The journal entries of these students are insightful, surprisingly honest and often heart-breaking.
I highly recommend this book.
Love changes things Aug 24, 2009
This is an awesome book. I think that it really shows how love can truly change a person. These children had all experienced so much heartache and devastation. I really admire Mrs. Gruewell for her dedication and love she showed the teens. Her willingness to not give up enabled these children to shake loose the shackles of their past and became successful. I believe everyone should truly read this book. It gives people a better look at the lives of today's teens, especially the lives of those from "the hood". It also lets people know that they do have a chance to succeed and that they can overcome any obstacle placed in front of them no matter where they may be from.
A Must for Anyone Working With Teens Aug 11, 2009
As a retired teacher and social worker, who worked with at-risk preschoolers I found this book very moving. As I read the diary entries I could picture the diarists as children that I worked with who had grown to teenagers and had had no one to keep them following the path they started as a preschooler. I was moved by the changes these teens made after becoming a member of the Freedom Writers and by just the simple fact that they were still alive despite their family lives, their neighborhoods, drugs,alcohol,poverty and the lack of inspiration and encouragement offered by so many of their teachers throughout their school years. How different so many at-risk children's of United States lives would be if the Ms. Gruwells of the world was the norm for teachers instead of the exception! I remember being a first time teacher. I thought I had done a good job. Now I wish that I had done more with those children who needed more than a day at school but rather a "family-like" figure who would listen, challenge, inspire and find ways to really make a difference in their lives.
I really like how these teens looked outside themselves and could see the similarity between the pain and intolerance they faced and that of Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovie. To have such global insight at such a young age is remarkable.
I wish that the author of each entry could have some sort of identification so the reader could have followed the growth of the teen.....or maybe each entry was written by a separate teen?! [Although I think that several were written by the same person as the story line of some entries seemed to follow one person's life]. At times the comments of these teens were "So self-absorbed and teen-like". With the lives they were living what a joy it was to see that a little candle of just being a teenager was able to thrive.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Starts out fuzzy but wins you over Jul 28, 2009
This is one of those inspiring teacher books. And like most of these inspiring teacher books it's a little heavy on the moralizing and light on the actual hard work involved. The great teachers are like the great writers, painters and athletes because they have so much natural talent that they can't really explain how they do most of what they do. There's a lot of hard work but there's also natural ability.
And this one has a distinction of being the story of a teacher who is an unrepetant liberal. Most of these hardcore inspiring teacher books seem to have a rightwing bias in which the teacher is a Joe Clark like crazy DISCIPLINARIAN who makes them knuckle under like it's a boot camp before they can learn. She's more the kind of teacher that becomes an example of what not to do when teaching. As in the story of "that Americorp volunteer who stupidly gave his address to his students and two of them tried to rob him and killed him."
But there's a terrific earnestness going through this book that trumps one's natural cynicism. Erin Gruwell could be an idealist because she was new and she was also very stubborn in her idealism. And the fact of the matter is that she succeeds because she did respect her students and she cared about their welfare. Eventually she wore them down.
But the main thing that makes this book decent is that it's about the students. Yes, there is some definite editing in the book. The first editing process is choosing what to put in and what to keep out. The diary entries are put up against each other in order to tell a story. Obviously the early entries are a little too polished to be believable as 9th grade journal entries, but Jim Carroll edited The Basketball Diaries and that didn't make them any less "authentic". They were just polished up before publication.
The main point of the diaries is that there are a lot of intelligent articulate people in crappy situations who are marginalized by their situations. Some can overcome their social limitations but most can't - not on their own at least. To expand on that theme, these writers overcame their situations because they had someone who believed in them and respected them. Everyone needs that; but for some it's a very rare commodity.
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