I had two very strong responses to this book. On the one hand, I was simply impressed. . . . On the other hand - and precisely because it was so effectively written - the book made me squirm. . . . Talk about hitting home.
- Stephen M .North

Patricia Dunn makes the case for a writing pedagogy that draws upon multiple literacies and then gives numerous, detailed examples of how that theory can be translated into classroom practice. Challenging the assumption that written texts play an almost exclusive role in the production of knowledge in composition classrooms, her book foregrounds other, more intellectually diverse ways of knowing: oral, visual, kinesthetic, spatial, and social pathways. Dunn goes on to describe what she and her students learned when they experimented with Freire's "multiple channels of communication" and how it helped them gain the metacognitive distance they needed for writing and revision.