The Spiritual Art of Dialogue: Mastering Communication for Personal Growth, Relationships, & the WorkPlace Book

I think the low ratings are unfair as I believe many of the reviewers do not realize this book is for young people. As a speech/language pathologist, the content was a review for me...but I also really enjoy David Crystal's books, so I picked it up to see what he would say. I found the style to be easy-breezy enough, but packed full of the "need to know" conceptual information vital to briefly understanding how language develops given real-life examples. I was seized with the wish that all teacher preparation programs would make this required reading. In this book are concepts that are so integral to learning, but those I truly believe many teachers don't realize are foundational for a student's understanding of their instruction. It is a conversational enough book to be non-threatening to one's time and effort (I finished it in an afternoon) and would increase the understanding and empathy among educators of the many variables (and potential road-blocks) to children's communication which is so relied upon for participating in today's learning environments.