From the inside of the book: If this book appears to be speaking only of children in penal institutions and children in the poorer public schools, then its appearance is deceiving. For the kind of poverty that identifies the child who is the true subject of this book, is a poverty of experience - a poverty which can afflict lives lived at $100,000 a year just as readily as it curses the $1,000-a-year existence. The poorest man in the world is the man limited to his own experience, the man who does not read. This book is about every child who may become such a man.