"A round my block there is a lat of glass and food and paper and people fight all the time. I like people to love each other."

The ghetto child speaks, and the world emerges as he sees it and as he wishes it to be. This remarkable collection reveals the expanding awareness of nearly two hundred primary and secondary school children as they think about themselves, their painfully limiting surroundings, and the broader world which they often know of only by hearsay. Here, too, are their brightest dreams and their darkest nightmares, the things they can neither see nor touch. Though often displaying fierce emotions, these writings also express the flights of imagination which all children share. The ghetto child speaks for all of America. It is for us to listen.