New books
Titles are selected from the many new books received by NAEYC. Educator Gail Perry writes
the annotations. The books are available from the publishers listed, your local bookstore, or
online retailers.
Elementary educators. 2006. Creating a Safe and Friendly School. Turners Falls, MA: Northeast
Foundation for Children. 115 pp. ISBN 978-1-892989-16-1. $16.00.
Seventeen articles by educators focus on strategies used at their schools to promote a schoolwide
climate of trust, caring, respect, and security in all the spaces of the school. Principals and teachers
share examples of how they alleviate problems on the bus, playgrounds, and in school bathrooms, and
help children use calm and friendly behavior in school hallways, during lunchtime, and in special
classes. Suggested resources include books, videos, Web sites, and tools like a parent-student handbook on
building self-control.
Fleet, A., C. Patterson, & J. Robertson. 2006. Insights: Behind Early Childhood Pedagogical
Documentation. Castle Hill, NSW, Australia: Pademelon. 370 pp. ISBN 1-876138-20-3. $89.95.
Teachers, teacher educators, and early childhood students from Australia, New Zealand, and North
America demonstrate how pedagogical documentation gives visibility to the complex ways children and
teachers construct meaning in the classroom. The authors explore the ways this process enables teachers
to reflect on their decision making and engage with colleagues, children, and families to examine and
enhance the relationships and the understandings and assumptions about teaching and learning
occurring in their classrooms. A theme highlighted throughout is the centrality of social justice issues
in Reggio-inspired teaching and learning and how pedagogical documentation can support antibias
work.
The authors explore key questions in the early childhood field, like how can teachers create a
voice for children in the curriculum or reconcile investigations and documentation with school system
curriculum requirements? The text addresses some practical issues, like deciding what is worthy of
documentation or the implications of children's conversations and actions in each child's learning.
Helm, J.H., & A. Helm. 2006. Building Support for Your School: How to Use Children's Work
to Show Learning. New York: Teachers College Press. 128 pp. ISBN 0-8077-4714-9. $19.95.
In the current environment, where test scores dominate as the evidence of children's learning and low
performances in math and literacy fuel public anxiety, early childhood schools must be proactive and
more effective in communicating the quality education that is occurring in their programs. The authors
combine their expertise in marketing, public relations, and documentation to help early childhood
programs make their communications more professional and use documentation of children's work to
capture children's learning and provide insights into the educational processes.
Early childhood programs communicate with many stakeholders: families, geographic neighbors,
corporate governing boards and sponsors, volunteers, accrediting and regulatory agencies, legislators,
and taxpayers. The authors present the principles of professional communication and illustrate how to
incorporate ideas from graphic design, museum display, and media techniques into their
communications. Practical strategies and samples of effective communications will help administrators
and teachers analyze their audience needs, plan convincing messages, and incorporate documentation
into brochures, Web sites, community displays, and newsletters. The authors offer techniques for
organizing exhibits for events, such as open houses, science fairs, or community celebrations, and
preparing press releases and participating in interviews. This book fills a critical need in the early childhood field.
Smith, S.Z., & M.E. Smith, eds. 2006. Teachers Engaged in Research: Inquiry into Mathematics
Classrooms, Grades Pre-K–2. Greenwich, CT: Information Age. 235 pp. ISBN 1-59311-495-8.
$39.95.
These teachers' accounts provide a look inside the teaching and learning of math for young
children and highlight the power of using an inquiry approach to help teachers deepen their knowledge
of math content and their understanding of children's learning processes. This book originated from
efforts by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to expand traditional conceptions of
research in mathematics by including practitioner inquiry.
The chapters address issues that matter to teachers and detail ways to research those issues. The
authors focus on a challenging aspect of teaching math—how to gain insight into children's thinking
and understanding and then use this insight to promote further understanding. They use excerpts of
classroom discussions and samples of children's work to illustrate children's reasoning and sense-making about
topics like odd and even numbers, the properties of addition and subtraction, linear measurement, and
shape and dimension. Teachers and teacher educators describe the kinds of collaborative work with
other teachers and the professional development experiences that help them consider and reconsider
strategies and materials needed to support day-to-day decisions.
Zigler, E., W.S. Gilliam, & S.M. Jones. A Vision for Universal Preschool Education. New
York: Cambridge University Press. 279 pp. ISBN 0-521-61299-3. $29.99.
The authors argue that now is an opportune time to create a national preschool program for all
children from birth through the transition to kindergarten. They make recommendations for designing,
implementing, funding, and evaluating an optimal preschool program and provide a rationale and model
for people who can make universal preschool a reality—leaders in early education, economists,
philanthropists, business leaders, and policy makers.
Chapters address the economic returns and lasting benefits for investment in high-quality
preschool education and include familiar early childhood components, such as the necessity to meet the
needs of the whole child, school readiness, comprehensive services, parental involvement, well-trained
and -compensated teachers. Believing that universal preschool should be the province of states, the
authors propose a combined funding adequate to support high-quality programs, periodic monitoring,
and quality enhancement efforts.
Copyright © 2006 by the National Association for the Education
of Young Children. See
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