The need to recognize the presence and significance of language diversity in educationalsettings in the United States has become increasingly apparent to educators and educational policymakers in recent years. Among the more contentious debates about public education that we have witnessed have been those concerned directly with language and linguisticmatters, not the least of which have been those dealing with the education of minority-languagestudents in general and bilingual education programs in particular. Also, frequent touchstones foreducational debate have been efforts to “recognize” African American VernacularEnglish as many children's first and dominant language variety—a matter of nolinguistic controversy at all but one of immense political and educational controversy, as events inOakland, California, made quite clear. Although of increasing significance and relevance, it isinteresting that relatively few works have sought to target one of the more important audiencesconcerned with such debates: future classroom teachers. Issues of language and languagediversity are largely absent from the teacher education literature, and preservice teachers arerelatively unlikely to be exposed in any significant or in-depth way to such matters in their formalpreparation (see Reagan, 1997). As David Corson notes in Language diversity and education, “A major challenge for beginning teachers is to understand how languagedifferences construct and reflect ideologies and power relations, especially through the work thatteachers do themselves” (p. 96). Fortunately, the two books under review here provide anexcellent start for helping new and future teachers to develop the type of critical languageawareness necessary if they are to meet the needs of their students more adequately.