Where Art and Fact Ignite

Mountain Blood by Will Baker. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. 175 pages. $14.95.

Once I was asked to help design an interdisciplinary learning experience for third graders. Initially, the idea seemed to have merit; we would weld the study of history, local literature, mapping skills, and the students’ own life stories into one unit of study. Our purpose, as the Director of the Talented and Gifted Education Office of the local school district explained it to me, was to help students integrate their learning from different subject areas into a composite understanding of local culture.