How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk,
Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
Excellent book on respectful communication with children, with cartoon examples of "do's" and "don'ts."

How to Talk So Kids Can Learn,
Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
Award-winning book which helps teachers and parents help children with problems that could interfere with learning. Emphasis on self-direction and self-discipline.

Teacher Effectiveness Training,
Thomas Gordon
Older classic on styles of teacher/child communication which keep communication channels open in the classroom.

Your Child's Self Esteem,
Dorothy Corkille-Briggs
Clear statements on what self esteem is, how it develops, how important it is, and guidelines for parents to foster high self esteem in their children.

Emotional Intelligence,
Daniel Goleman
The author discusses how emotional skills are more important to life satisfaction and success than IQ. He offers strategies for educators and parents to assist children in developing these important skills.

Playground Politics,
Stanley I. Greenspan, MD
The playground is as important as the classroom. Elementary children's emotional and social lives are busy with practicing and establishing the interpersonal skills that will serve them their whole lives. They need as much adult help, if not more, with interpersonal dynamics and emotional skills, as with intellectual skill building.

The Magical Child,
Joseph Chilton Pearce
Right from the instant of birth, says Joseph Chilton Pearce, the human child has only one concern -- to learn all that there is to learn about the world. But in the West we tend to thwart this concern from the very start. Available once again, the Magical Child shows how to restore this amazing capacity for creative intelligence that is innate in every human.

Deschooling Our Lives,
edited by Matt Hern (1996, New Society Publishers)
C hallenges our assumptions about the nature of education by illustrating many learner-centered options that people are doing (successfully!) in place of traditional schooling.

Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood,
A.S. Neill (1960, edited by Albert Lamb, 1996)
Portrays the development of Play Mountain's "ideological match," a well-known free school in England. Summerhill is based on Neill's firm belief in self-regulation and allowing children to make their own rules and determine for themselves how much to study.

Making It Up As We Go Along,
Chris Mercogliano (1998, Heinemann Press)
Tells of the real life experiences of The Albany Free School where the guiding principles of educating are "love, emotional honesty, peer-level leadership, and cooperation" (p. 19). Founded in 1969.

Lives of Children,
George Dennison (1969)
Now over 30 years old, this book's lessons are still invaluable. It gives the day by day diary of a teacher helping to start a unique elementary free school in urban New York. (Out of print: Amazon will attempt to find a copy. You can also try www.bibliofind.com, or Emanuel at The Community School in Maine may also have some extra copies.)

Teacher,
Sylvia Ashton-Warner
This book reads like a diary and includes wonderful stories of the author's "organic teaching" of reading to Maori children in New Zealand. Her joy in life comes through in every sentence.

Dumbing Us Down,
John Taylor Gatto
A critique of traditional school structure and teaching styles which limit and harm students' creativity, self esteem, ability to solve problems and think critically, and dramatically increase the chances that they will hate learning for the rest of their lives.

On Becoming a Person,
Carl Rogers
A work that helped define humanistic psychology, and a good first book of Carl Rogers' thinking. Discusses the "person centered" view of human development, and "person centered" psychology.

Freedom and Beyond,
John Holt
A critique of society and the place of traditional education in it. Some wonderful thoughts on uses of freedom, tensions of freedom, authority, choice, deschooling.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
Paulo Friere
An absolute must for educators who wish to understand the implications of the choice of educational methodology, particularly in literacy learning. Friere's understanding of the inherent liberation or oppression of various methods is a clarifying underpinning for an educator who wants to foster equal opportunity for every child. His passion keeps the reader inspired through this theoretical book, which is sometimes a slow read.

Pedagogy of Hope,
Paulo Friere
Published years after "Pedagogy of Oppression", this is a reflection upon the early work and upon his lifetime of applying his methodology in a multitude of countries and settings. The most important figure in literacy campaigns in our century.

Looking for Home,
Carollyne Sinclaire
A book that explores the potential for using the classroom as a place for "becoming at home in the world," not merely a place of instruction. It contains more inclusive educational goals, like Play Mountain Place's.

Education and Ecstasy,
George B. Leonard
Believing that learning changes the learner, learning involved interaction with the environment, and that education, at best, is ecstatic, the author in 1968 explored what schools could be. Much is still relevant today.

Filtering People: Understanding and Confronting Our Prejudices,
Jim Cole
A simply written, but highly intelligent book which shows how prejudices develop and can be overcome.

Everyday Acts Against Racism,
Maureen T. Reddy, ed.
This book looks at practical ways teachers and parents have acted against overt and subtle racism.