Selective mutism is a severe childhood anxiety disorder which causes children to be mute in social settings, including school. These children have the ability to speak and understand language, develop age appropriate skills, and function normally at home with most family members. The Silence Within describes a reading specialist's experience and intervention with a selectively mute child. It includes quarterly goals, daily strategies and activities, resources, references and reproducibles. The author accurately describes the weekly changing goals in the fostering work with Nick. At first one clearly realizes the behavioral orientation of this work, but then it becomes also clear, that Kervatt more and more switched to formulate the goals together with the child and even to evaluate them together with him. In this sense, the work becomes a form of cognitive behavior modification. Most impressing to my opinion is, that the fostering process is not a clinical study, but takes place under the school's everyday conditions. Stimulus fading procedures are shown in a very illustrative manner. Finally, some of the classical educational methods prove their always valid significance (e.g. when Nick rehearses a puppet play or when he begins to learn short songs and verses). More over, it is the empathic relationship between Kervatt and the child which seems to be a main factor of efficacy. Gail Goetze Kervatt is a reading specialist in a public elementary school. In her self-published, spiral bound book, she recounts through narrative and copies of her session notes, the compelling story of how she and other school personnel devised and implemented a treatment plan for Nick, a selectively mute child, during his early elementary school years. The Silence Within - A Teacher/Parent Resource to Working with Selectively Mute and Shy Children. The CD version of my book is available for $28.95 through my site: www.selective-mutism.com or directly at PO Box 2323 Oak Ridge, NJ. The PDF is available instantly via download. It is $29.95 for the download version from my site. Available through Amazon.com, SpeechBin.com or www.selective-mutism.com.