Memorial: Love, Loss, and the Art of Remembrance is a lyrical and visually powerful exploration of how one community transformed anguish into action. Born from the temporary Highland Park Arts Memorial — sparked by artist-activist Jacqueline von Edelberg in response to the July 4th mass shooting — and evolved in Nashville after the Covenant School tragedy, this book weaves poetry, photography, and personal reflection into a deeply moving journey through grief, healing, and hope. It captures how a public space became sacred ground, how art gave form to sorrow, and how the human need for connection turned mourning into movement.
More than a tribute, Memorial is a call to resist paralysis, to create beauty in the face of darkness, and to remember that healing begins when we come together.
The book is in English and Spanish; both hardback and ebook are offered at cost.
When two gutsy moms ventured inside Nettelhorst, their neighborhood’s underutilized and struggling public elementary school, the new principal asked what it would take for them to enroll their children. Stunned by her candor, they returned the next day armed with an extensive wish list. The principal read their list and said “Well, let’s get started, girls! It’s going to be a busy year . . . “
How to Walk to School is the story—from the highs to the lows—of motivated neighborhood parents galvanizing and then organizing an entire community to take a leap of faith, transforming a challenged urban school into one of Chicago’s best, virtually overnight.
The fate of public education is not beyond our control. In How to Walk to School, Susan Kurland, Nettelhorst’s new and entrepreneurial principal, and Jacqueline von Edelberg, the neighborhood mom, provide an accessible and honest blueprint for reclaiming the great public schools our children deserve.
“Parents living in the Chicago district served by the notoriously run-down Nettelhorst School, not necessarily failing, but with an unshakeable reputation for it faced a too-typical dilemma: try to get their children into ultra-competitive magnet schools? Find a way to pay for private school tuition? Move to the better-served suburbs? Instead, a small group of motivated parents, including author Edelberg, decided to take a whole new approach – working with principal Kurland to turn Nettelhorst into the school they wanted. Sooner than anyone expected, they had turned the flagging institution around; chronicled here, their process for revitalizing the local school provides an inspirational blueprint for any parents determined to make the most of public education. Edelberg and Kurland offer a lot of inspirational ideas in this memoir of their work but aside from acknowledging the distinct advantage of a parent population with extra time and finances, they provide little perspective for those working for the same goals but with fewer resources. Still, this volume is an admirable achievement that will doubtless be looked to as a model for school districts in need.”
Publishers Weekly“This is a fascinating account of the collaboration between a public school principal, Kurland, the parents of young children considering her elementary school, and the community that transformed a failing public school into an outstanding and revitalized one. In the face of disastrous, widespread public school system failures across America, parent dissatisfaction, and teacher despair, the Chicago-based Nettlehorst School’s success story is a beacon. Edelberg, one of the Nettlehorst parents, and Kurland offer educators hope that change can happen in any public school, given the right mix of parent-teacher patience, willpower, community involvement, pluck, creativity, collaboration, and ability to overcome adversity. They provide a blueprint that schools can use for revitalization projects, detailing, for instance, how to procure donations from area businesses and to ask questions that will get answers about difficult educational problems such as coping with dysfunctional and unsatisfactory teaching. This book is essential reading for all elementary school parents and teachers, especially those who have lost their faith in the American public school system and are looking for ways to improve it. Here are solutions and inspiration.”
Library Journal“In this highly informative book, Edelberg and Kurland essentially lay out a model for reviving the neighborhood school. They detail the struggles, from tensions with some teachers, to a lack of cooperation with school bureaucracy, to charges by some parents that the school was being gentrified. The reformers knew they had to focus on the essentials: develop partnerships with local businesses and nonprofit organizations, improve academic performance, and improve the school’s image to attract more middle-class families. After all the joy and struggle, the group transformed the school into a high performer that has been acclaimed nationally for its achievement. This is a compelling story of transformation and an incredibly helpful resource-a blueprint-for parents similarly motivated.”
Booklist, Starred Review“To read it is to come away inspired with the idea that regardless of one’s community setting, it is vital to get parents and local businesses involved in the life of one’s school….This book is a blueprint for showing how to break down those walls that separate to achieve a human and financial renaissance.”
Multicultural Review