Voices from the Future: Our Children Tell Us About Violence in America.

This volume is the third in a series of books generated by Children's Express, the award-winning Washington-based news service whose reporters and editors are teenagers. This unique service was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 and won Peabody and Emmy awards in 1988.

The Children's Express editors traveled across the country to conduct the interviews that form the substance of this book. The acknowledgments page recognizes people from all across the nation who helped facilitate this dialogue. The result is an oral history of the violence that our children have experienced and perpetuated.

"It is a shocking and compelling work," writes Jonathan Kozol in the introduction. "The wealthiest nation in the world has compromised its honor and betrayed its best traditions by an institutionalized, persistent and sometimes sadistic viciousness toward its most vulnerable citizens--the only citizens who have no vote, no legal rights to speak of, and no public voice."

Editor Goodwillie took the mountains of taped interview transcripts conducted by the teenage reporters and organized them under nine major headings. Beginning on a grim note with "Violence, Like Charity, Begins at Home" and concluding with "Epilogue: Can We Create a Better Future To Give Back to Our Children?" (a roundtable discussion with Children's Express editors from New York and Indianapolis), the book's cumulative effect is a hopeful vision for a brighter future. It is not, however, a sanitized version of what the teenagers heard. The writing is painful and its message is moving. Children's Express is to be commended for developing this challenging document that should be read by everyone who is concerned about the welfare of children in America and is in a position to do something positive about their future.