How do you define "success?" There are many ways -- and there is not a child, parent, or teacher who can (or should) achieve them all. The author of this masterful book knows it, and that is one of the many, many virtues of this work.

The author says, "We will define success in chinuch as helping our child become the kind of person who strives on his own to reach his potential." That is refreshing. Even more refreshing is that Rabbi Zecharya Greenwald combines common sense with uncommon experience and achievement in guiding parents and teachers along the road to success. He has founded and headed yeshivos, girls schools and seminaries, and has dealt with a wide variety of students and their families. For him every situation is an enriching learning experience that he uses for the benefit of the many who thirst for his guidance.

He avoids dogma and focuses on what works, on how to guide a child without crushing his or her initiative, on how to deal with and when to skirt the necessary guidelines of schools, how to raise levels of confidence and accomplishment.

This book has a wealth of practical analysis and advice that every teacher and parent will value and be able to put to good and effective use. The beneficiaries will be children, families, schools -- and the entire nation, because children are our building blocks, and strong building blocks make strong buildings.