<p>Straight from the front line of urban America, the inspiring story of one fiercely determined teacher and her remarkable students.<br><br><br>As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of &#8220;unteachable, at-risk&#8221; students. One day she intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust&#8212;only to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books <i>Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl</i> and <i>Zlata&#8217;s Diary: A Child&#8217;s Life in Sarajevo</i> as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the &#8220;Freedom Writers&#8221; in homage to the civil rights activists &#8220;The Freedom Riders.&#8221;<br><br>With funds raised by a &#8220;Read-a-thon for Tolerance,&#8221; they arranged for Miep Gies, the courageous Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California, where she declared that Erin Gruwell&#8217;s students were &#8220;the real heroes.&#8221; Their efforts have paid off spectacularly, both in terms of recognition&#8212;appearances on &#8220;Prime Time Live&#8221; and &#8220;All Things Considered,&#8221; coverage in <i>People</i> magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley&#8212;and educationally. All 150 Freedom Writers have graduated from high school and are now attending college.<br><br>With powerful entries from the students&#8217; own diaries and a narrative text by Erin Gruwell, <i>The Freedom Writers Diary</i> is an uplifting, unforgettable example of how hard work, courage, and the spirit of determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students. <br><br>The authors&#8217; proceeds from this book will be donated to The Tolerance Education Foundation, an organization set up to pay for the Freedom Writers&#8217; college tuition. Erin Gruwell is now a visiting professor at California State University, Long Beach, where some of her students are Freedom Writers.</p>