There's something truly great about giving a voice to the voiceless. I think this is Ellen Gruwell's gift more than anything else. This book is the diary of the diverse kids in a class room who learned to listen to each other and encourage each other when very few others would. An integration program in LA brought at risk inner city kids into a school where they were possibly more doomed to fail than before. Their teacher taught them that they had more in common with each other than they knew, but also that there were characters in books that had some of the same problems that they did. Sometimes finding your own voice starts with listening to someone else.