Lighting Their Fires

One of America’smost celebrated educators teaches parents how to create extraordinary children—in the classroom and beyondIn his bestselling book, Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire, readers were introduced to Rafe Esquith and his extraordinary students in Hobart Elementary School’s Room 56. Using his amazing andinspiring classroom techniques, Esquith has helped thousands ofchildren learn to maximize their potential. In Lighting Their Fires,Esquith shows that children aren’t born extraordinary; they become that way as a result of parents and teachers who instill values that serve them not just in school, but for the rest of their lives.Framed by a class trip to a major league baseball game,Lighting Their Fires moves inning by inning through concepts that help children build character and develop enriching lives. Whether he is highlighting the importance of time management or offering a step-by-step discussion of how children can become good decision makers, Esquith shows how parents can equip their kids with all the tools they need to find success and have fun in the process.Using examples from classic films and great books, he stresses the value of sacrifice, the importance of staying true to oneself, and the danger that television can pose to growing young minds.Lighting Their Fires is that rarest of education books: one that explains not just how to make our children great students, but how to make them thoughtful and honorable people.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Self-Help, Philosophy, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.