The award-winning Talking Walls introduces young readers to different cultures and different issues around the world by telling the stories of walls and how they can hold a community together or separate it.

Written by Margy Burns Knight
Illustrated by Anne Sibley O'Brien

9 1/2 x 11, 40 pages (soft cover), color illustrations, grades 3-8

Optional (fantastic) 70-page Teacher's Guide, $9.95

Featured walls include the Great Wall of China, the murals of Diego Rivera, Nelson Mandela's prison walls, a Holocaust memorial in Poland, Ndebele wall designs in South Africa, the Western Wall, the Viet Nam memorial, and the Berlin Wall. These books will spark the curiosity of young readers as they learn about their world and its amazing diversity.

FROM THE INSIDE COVER: Do walls talk? If they did, what would they tell us? Who built them? Why? Can you imagine a world without walls? Talking Walls is a unique addition to the field of children's literature: it introduces young readers to different cultures by exploring walls around the world, showing the impact of walls on the people who build and are divided or unified by these partitions. In Talking Walls, vibrantly colored pastel illustrations portray the way children live with these walls. We wander into a dark cave with four French children to discover the amazing Lascaux cave paintings. An Australian aboriginal youth shows us how each generation in his family has added images of their hands to a wall of paintings going back thousands of years. A child tucks his folded prayer between the stones of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, listening for an answer. How far away are these walls? Who would you meet at them? What languages would you hear? Answers to these questions and other information about the talking walls are included on each page and in a useful compendium at the end of the book. Climb on these walls, explore these different cultures as your fingers touch the different stones. Where are there walls in your world? What stories do they tell?

REACH AND TEACH SAYS: The art is stunning, the stories are amazing, the diversity is fantastic, and the opportunities for using these walls to introduce civilations, cultures, history, geography, art, civic engagement, justice, equality, ..... and on and on and on. This is a must-have for every classroom or home.

AWARDS:

• Pick of the Lists," American Bookseller
• Top 25 Non-Fiction Children's Books,  Boston Globe
• Children's Books of Distinction, Hungry Mind Review
• Noteworthy Book from Parallel Cultures, Horn Book
• Paperback Plum, Booklinks
• Starred Review ALA Booklist