<P>Tracy Kidder -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of <I>The Soul of a New Machine</I> and the extraordinary national bestseller <I>House</I> -- spent nine months in Mrs. Zajac's fifth-grade classroom in the depressed "Flats" of Holyoke, Massachusetts. For an entire year he lived among twenty schoolchildren and their indomitable, compassionate teacher -- sharings their joys, their catastrophes, and their small but essential triumphs. As a result, he has written a revealing, remarkably poignant account of education in America . . . and his most memorable, emotionally charged, and important book to date. <P></P>