Educators today often feel out of touch with their students. To effectively teach children, teachers must first connect with them and understand them. This book shows teachers how to become relevant to their students by leaning in, establishing implicit understanding, tackling emotionality, transforming culture, looking around, and creating experiences. Includes practical strategies, engaging anecdotes, and ready-to-use mini-lessons. King's book focuses on instructors' desires to be relevant and significant in a world that is moving ever faster. Based on a framework of belonging, believing, and becoming, King offers nudges to relevance throughout and encourages readers to consider the perspective of a student through the pursuit of wonder. Most of the 10 chapters in the book pose examples of ways to incorporate relevancy in the classroom immediately. Although the entire book, which can be read in chunks or as a whole, can be useful for elementary school teachers and instructional coaches, Chapter Nine sums it up: "One of the easiest ways to capitalize on relevant moments is to let your learners talk, or 'unleash the wheesht!'"(Scottish way of shushing). Then, the entirety of Chapter Ten is lessons that have been broken down in a traditional format. A strategy book that is easy to read, comprehend, and apply, this will resonate with primary instructors who are feeling the pressure of connecting with their students after a very strange few years in education. King offers suggestions to improve current pedagogy, relates relevance to behavior concerns, and ultimately, ties the importance of relevance to student voice. VERDICT This is a great choice for elementary and early middle level instructors, or the coaches who support them, who are looking to find a more authentic connection to their students.-Samantha Hullα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. After 20 years in public education, Valerie King continues to innovate and inspire learners and educators. Through her roles as a 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-grade teacher and, most recently, a K–5 advanced learning and gifted specialist in the Cobb County School District, Georgia, Valerie has championed relevancy for learners in order to promote their awareness that they can have world-changing agency. Valerie earned a B.A. in Early Childhood and Elementary Education from the University of Montevallo, Alabama, and her M.A. in Early Childhood Education from Kennesaw State University, Georgia. After earning an Ed.S. in Technology Leadership from Northwestern State University, Louisiana, she returned to Kennesaw State University to earn her Ed.D. in Teacher Leadership. Whether it is speaking at local or national conferences, leading educators through professional learning experiences, or teaching in a classroom, Valerie is an educator with an unwavering commitment of soul, creativity, and love for empowering learners of all ages. This is her first book for Scholastic.