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JENNY'S STORY: TAKING THE LONG VIEW OF THE CHILD by Patricia F. Carini and Margaret Himley, with Carol Christine, Cecilia Espinosa, and Julia Fournier New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. 210pp. $29.95.
It is a radical idea, a politically potent act, to take die child, each child and every child, as the starting place and an endpoint for education, (p. 63)
Jenny 's Story: Taking the Long View of the Child is a book about one child - one powerful, deeply engaged, and thoughtfully deliberate young child. The authors are a group of experts: Jenny's mother, her schoolteachers, and Patricia Carini and Margaret Himley, key developers of the Descriptive Review Process used to document Jenny's story. Chronicling a study begun in 1997, readers get to see Jenny Williams through all of elementary school. We see her as a budding reader who starts by memorizing the book, Henny Penny. We see her as a first grade poet contemplating the "crkol ow Liyf ' (or, as we know it, the Circle of Life). We see Jenny, at age eight, passionately confronting a classmate's claim that women are less important than men. In fifth grade, we see her making numerous and empowered requests of her teacher - no field trips on Tuesdays or Thursdays because of violin lessons and more than forty minutes in the daily schedule for research - and asking the principal to be a part of the student film group even though she was not originally selected.
We see Jenny as a flat-footed but eager soccer goalie, a child who hugs with her whole body and whole self, a spiritual person keenly interested in Bible stories, storing her prayers in a small china box. We see Jenny's Mestizo roots in her brown eyes and her brown skin, and we see Jenny developing her commitment - over time - to justice and to a more gentle and loving humankind. And, through the years, we also see Jenny taking too many trips to the nurse, struggling to transition between activities, seeming sometimes not to pay attention to the teacher's directives, moving to a new school, appearing uncoordinated, and steadfastly resisting being labeled "slow." Jenny is described as a child and a person, a daughter and a sister,...