This important guide offers practical ideas for the classroom, lists of recommended stories and texts and checklists to help formulate whole-school policies.

It covers a lot of ground in only 72 pages, but there is a feeling of a bigger book struggling to get out. It might have helped, for example, to have case studies showing the obviously good ideas in action.

Brent has a long track record of pioneering work in multilingualmulticultural schools. We need such authorities to pass their experience on, most particularly to areas where a black face is seldom seen nor a foreign tongue heard.

Sandy Brownjohn is a writer andeducational consultant