underscore the importance of pushing for clearer, stronger links between theory, research, and prac- tice in the field(s) of multimodal literacies and pedagogies. Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century: Literate Connections Edited by Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 288 pp., ISBN 978-1-4039-7220-0 The strength of Gam- ing Lives lies in its highly nuanced presen- tation of the manifold forms of engagement of a diversity of gamers in an ever-increasing diversity of gaming practices. As the volume title implies, editors (and contributing authors) Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe take a unique “life history approach” (p. 3) to the examination of the complex phenomenon (or complex of phenomena, perhaps) of video gaming and the evaluation of its place within evolving, expanding notions of liter- acy and learning in the twenty-first century. The editors have organized this collection of 13 case- study-oriented chapters and three “interchapters” (excerpts from interviews with gamers of differ- ent ages, levels of experience, and backgrounds) to build upon and interrogate the earlier seminal work of James Paul Gee, presented in his What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (2003). Hawisher and Selfe and the other contributing authors add a critically impor- tant layer of ethnographic richness, complication, and balance to Gee’s discussions, exemplifying the maturation of this field of inquiry in general. In his helpful and insightful foreword, Gee writes, “[The contributors] engage in critique without destroying what they critique; they know how to T hreaded throughout this column, and the three books I review herein, is a concern for understanding the current and poten- tial roles in literacy, learning, and life of dimen- sions of communication excluded from traditional conceptions of literacy education. These include visual imagery, movement, gesture, sound, embodiment, and even silence, as well as interre- lations and interactions among them. The modifier most often attached to this kind of multidimen- sional meaning making is “multimodal,” owing mainly to the influential work of Gunther Kress and colleagues (cf. Jewitt & Kress, 2003; Kress, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996/2006, 2001). I will use this column as a platform for exploring emerging notions of multimodal literacies, a topic I continue to study in relation to digital storytell- ing practices (e.g., Hull & Nelson, 2005; Nelson, 2006; Nelson, 2008). To this end, I first discuss Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century: Literate Connec- tions (2007), edited by Gail Hawisher and Cyn- thia Selfe, a volume of essays on the general topic of computer-enabled gaming that provides both a broad and close view of the intersecting lives and multiple literacies of today’s gamers. Next, I introduce and examine Pippa Stein’s (2007) recent monograph, Multimodal Pedagogies in Diverse Classrooms: Representation, Rights, and Resources. In her book, written with an overarch- ing goal to achieve social justice, Stein documents the potent transformations that occur in the mul- timodal texts and minds of the young South Afri- cans who participated in the storytelling programs she studied. Finally, I review Visual Approaches to Teaching Writing: Multimodal Literacy 5–11, by Eve Bearne and Helen Wolstencroft. This last book is a theoretically well grounded, yet prac- tical handbook for teachers wishing to tap the multimodal meaning-making potentials of their students. My implicit aim in selecting these par- ticular texts and presenting them in this order is to Professional Book Reviews Multimodal Literacies: Linking Theory, Research, and Practice Mark Evan Nelson Professional Book Reviews Language Arts ● Vol. 86 ● No. 2 ● November 2008 142 Copyright © 2008 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.