A short book, but not a quick read. Very wordy, and unnecessarily so.

I found it ironic that the name of the book and the theme of the book seem to be targeted to helping teachers improve the reading comprehension and writing skills of their students; especially since so much of the book is written using words that are difficult to understand and have no meaning to the target audience for this book. It defeats the purpose. I am an avid reader, but I was frustrated continuously throughout the book, as I found myself distracted and trying to discern the meaning of words such as "agentive," which I would venture to guess was used at least 100 times (no exaggeration). I don't understand the author's fascination with that one particular word, but regardless, the entire book begs the question, "Why not write the book in a way that is easy to understand, seeing that the purpose is intended to ultimately help students read books in a way that is easy to understand?" I could easily see many teachers giving up in the middle of this book and not even finishing it, and that is unfortunate because there are some good tools and techniques demonstrated within the pages of this book.

With that said, I do like the layout of the book. Each chapter has paragraph headings that are questions that teachers can use in formative assessment to help students begin to learn how to learn. If someone took this book and just studied some of those questions and immediately put them into practice, it could make a difference in the growth of their students, and it would go a long way toward improving someone's teaching skills.