Intended for both experienced and novice K-12 teachers, this book invites teachers to bring new life into the reading-writing workshop and calls for teachers to push back the frontiers of their thinking about teaching writing and reading. The book includes chapters on establishing courses of study in which children read and write memoir, picture books, and nonfiction; the story of how writers' notebooks and a new focus on rehearsal have led to a major rethinking of the writing workshop; a look at the qualities of good writing; an introduction to literature and ways these texts can enrich classrooms; and an invitation to pioneer new ideas about conferring, record keeping, mini-lessons, and organizational structures for the workshop. Chapters in the book are: (1) Big Dreams and Tall Ambitions in the Teaching of Writing; (2) A Place for Writing and Reading; (3) Shared Stories Turn Classrooms into Communities; (4) The Notebook: A Tool for Writing and Living; (5) Rereading and Reflecting: Adding Growth Rings of Meaning to Our Writing; (6) From Notebooks to Projects; (7) Revision of Teaching; (8) When Writers Clear the Sills of Their World; (9) Silent Spaces and Study Groups in the Reading and Writing Workshop; (10) New Frontiers; (11) Picture Books and the Magic of "Once upon a Time"; (12) Memoir: Reading and Writing the Story of Our Lives; (13) And the Walls Come Tumbling Down: Bringing Our Lives to Nonfiction Research; (14) Learning to Confer in Ways That Last a Lifetime; (15) Records of Growth; (16) Hopes and Horizons: Understanding Our Children's Images of Good Writing; (17) Density in Writing: When Tests Take Writers and Readers on Significant Journeys; (18) On Loving Words; and (19) Nurturing Writing, Nurturing Teaching. (RS)