Sue Books is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at State University of New York at New Paltz. She is editor of Invisible Children in the Society and Its Schools (1998), a rich collection of essays dealing with all manner of issues and problems facing children and youth in this culture, from homophobia to racism to pregnancy to poverty. Valerie Polakow is a professor and my colleague here in the Department of Teacher Education at Eastern Michigan University. She is author of several books, including The Erosion of Child[1]hood (1982), Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America (1993), and most recently the editor of The Public Assault on America's Children: Poverty, Violence and Juvenile Injustice (2000).