I really was not that crazy about this book, which was my first full Jonathan Kozol read (previously I read excerpts of Savage Inequalities and expected this book to be more fact-heavy like that one). As a first year teacher in an urban school district, I thought I'd like Letters since it's basically a series of letters that Kozol sent to a first-year teacher in Boston throughout her first year of teaching. But, honestly, most of the book just seemed way too preachy to me.

Although parts of it were interesting (the stuff about standardized testing was particularly good), I found myself skimming most of it, especially towards the end. The book had little focus and I felt that it could have been edited down significantly. Plus, there were only so many times that I could handle Kozol getting up on his educational soap box before I felt like rolling my eyes. For most of the book he is describing what's really going on in American schools (for the worst) but it was difficult for me to feel a a whole lot of solidarity because he just didn't seem to offer a lot of hope or... something. I found it really strange that I agreed with most of his observations/thoughts on public education in American (except perhaps for his call to eliminate middle schools), yet I didn't really want to keep reading.