I bought *Children of Winter* on the sole basis of the subtitle («How the classroom is murdering the innocence of your child») and the five-sentence description in a specialized Catholic catalogue. I therefore had only a very faint idea of its contents, believing it to be a wholesale attack on «values-free education» combined with an attempt to understand the causes of the general malaise in the educational system, of which I am a firsthand observer.

But James Demers' book is much more focused than that. It can best be described as a semi-autobiographical series of vignettes charting the development of Canadian education and mores from the fifties to the nineties, interspersed with more structured chapters relying mostly on quotations to document the deeper origins of the decay.

...The best way to get an idea of its tone is from the presentation of the author as «a broadcaster, teacher, and playwright with 25 years experience in education and the arts.» With his flair for drama, characterization, telling anecdotes, pop-culture references and high-impact images, Demers writes in a style much more reminiscent of a Stephen King than of a Catholic scholar like, say, Michael Davies.

The result is as good as modern journalism gets, which in my opinion deserves three stars, or the equivalent of two (frozen) thumbs up...