Book Review: The Kindergarten Wars by Alan Eisenstock

Read and reviewed for armchair interviews

When you are looking into prospective schools for your children, do you know what sort of questions that you need to ask yours?

Do you know that your answers on the application to questions like “where did you go to college?” may be one of the most important answers you can give. Yes, to get your child into kindergarten.

In these days of public schools getting less and less funding, more parents are turning to private schools to educate their children. Combine that with the fact that it is becoming more and more fixed in people’s minds that in order to get a coveted education at a prestigious university, it helps to have attended the right schools as a child. Also, there are the other facts like more children entering school, and that siblings get first picks at class openings. Competition to get one of the few openings at a private school can be fierce as hundreds of parents compete for the prize of having their child be one of the elite that made it into the class.

Alan Eisenstock has written a narrative book that follows four families through the process of looking at choosing, and applying to enroll their child into the kindergarten of their choice. Each prospective family takes us through the process of visiting schools, applying to them, going through the interview process, and finally the waiting to hear back from the schools as to whether or not their child has gotten one of those few coveted openings. Alan Eisenstock has traveled. The country interviewing the heads of many private schools, he has followed and interviewed many families about the processes and questions that they debt with. His book follows fictional families in a city that could be any big city in the United States. However, he brings us the readers all of the knowledge that he has gleaned from his research to try and answer the one question that parents in the same situations as his families all have:

“How do you get in?”

ISBN: 044657774X
ISBN-13: 9780446577748
Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated
Publication Date: September 18, 2006
Binding: Hardcover

housing work's 2nd annual fair to help homeless people living w/ AIDS

For any NYC readers who might be looking for a good book sale that supports a great cause:

Housing Works is very happy to announce its second annual Open Air book Fair, on Saturday, September 30 from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Crosby St. (between Broadway and Lafayette) at Prince Street. With tens of thousands of books, records, CDs and DVDs marked down to a dollar or less. A sale you can't afford to miss!

Too much inventory, not enough space! Housing Works Bookstore is bulging with books, and so it's time again for a street sale, our biggest and best yet! Boxes and boxes of modern fiction and classics; art books, cook books, children's books and more! Music lovers come early—be the first to check out the thousands of records we've been saving for this special sale! Once you're bored with books go try on the exclusive merchandise from Housing Works Thrift Shops! They will be offering clothing on an "all-you-can-stuff" $20 a bag basis, as well as shoes, accessories and furniture! Music and food all day long, this promises to be 100 percent fun!

http://www.housingworks.org/usedbookcafe/streetfair.html

Buy a Friend a Book Week!

Another contest, this time for y'all to play in if you like.

My friend, the keeper of the West of Mars and the folks at Front Street Reviews are running hand in hand contests to help promote the good folks at Buy A Friend a Book Week. This contest combines my two favorites, books and music.



Firstly, check out West of Mars' contest then check out then Front Street's and win some books!

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I do live. Just a note for those of you wondering why I have been so quiet.

I am working on writing a review and having a hard time wrapping my head around it, and working on reading another review book.

Plus I picked up a copy of a small press printed book off the leave a book, take a book shelf at the local coffee house and want to write a review of it as well. Since it seems to be a book that could use some exposure.

I think the biggest thing keeping me from concentrating very hard is the construction they are doing at the intersection right by our building. It is noisy, and they have guys working 24 hours so not much sleep had been getting had as our windows channel in their generator noises and the big Cla-Clank noise that happens after every car that drives over the inch thick steel plate covering a hole right where cars turn off or onto our street.