Not teaching critical media literacy to your first graders? Why not?! With television and Internet content shaping how children see their world and themselves, Jeff Share argues 'the earlier the better'. This book makes a compelling case for helping our youngest students analyze and create media. Taking up the tools - cameras, computers, pens, and pencils - in their own hands, children begin to participate in the discourse of democracy. Most importantly, they learn that they belong. (Carol Jago, Vice President of the National Council of Teachers of English; Director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA) Media literacy needs to be understood as a fundamental component of any well-rounded educational curriculum in the twenty-first century. In this groundbreaking work, Jeff Share argues persuasively that it is never too early to help young children learn the skills they need to make sense of the media culture in which they're already immersed. Quite simply, this book should be required reading for all elementary educators, administrators, educational policy makers, and parents too. (Jackson Katz, Creator of the educational video 'Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity')