This week I talk with author John Shors about his latest novel "Dragon House". It's the story of Iris and Noah - two Americans in Vietnam who open a center to house and educate Vietnamese street children. Reviewers have said that the question that echoes throughout this novel is "how can we be better?"
The other book I'll feature this week is also about how to make ourselves better: whether we're a teacher, a a parent or a student. The journal of first year teacher Esme Raji Codell "Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year" has been re-published 10 years later. Described as"a rash, petite, white lady who roller-skates through the halls and insists that her fifth-graders call her "Madame Esmé." But it's not all fun and games: she introduces us to children who fling their desks and apologize in tears, and at one point, after reporting a disruptive student to her mother, who subsequently thrashes the young girl, she dry heaves into her classroom's trash can."
