With The Literature Workshop, Sheridan Blau creates an easy-to-navigate and logically-organized teacher's companion.  In part one, he highlights traditions in literature classrooms, traditions that create a dependancy on literature teachers rather than help create the self-sufficent literature student.  He then argues for change, a change that could come through the use of literature workshop in the classroom.  Throughout the rest of the text, he anticipates problems that a teacher might run into and he offers solutions through modeling.  The examples of literature he uses to model are very well-chosen in the fact that they are complex but do not scare off reluctant readers.  For example, "My Papa's Waltz" on page 61 is accessible even to readers that struggles with poetry.  With the exception of the word "countenance" in line 7, all the words are everyday words that create a variety of possible initial images that are readily available without interpretation.  Because the words create a variety of possible images though, the poem encourages a discussion in which students need to return to the poem for closer readings.  This characteristic also makes the examples ready to use by literature teachers beginning a literature workshop.  With the modeled discussions, teachers can anticipate possible avenues that discussion might travel and therefore go into discussion confidently.  After practicing the workshop with the texts that Blau uses, a teacher should then have a strong enough background of the literature workshop method to choose his or her own texts       

 The Literature Workshop also has its weaknesses.  Although it can be a resource to a teacher with any level of experience beginning a literature workshop, secondary teachers with years of experience might be put off by Blau's sometimes condescending tone.  Blau acknolwedges this tone.  "I am an academic," he reminds the reader.  "I simply write in the language I ordinarily use in my professional life . .  a language acquired gradually through (my) participation in an academic community" (160).   The problem is, Blau's academic community is not the same academic community that secondary teachers are a part of.  Blau's academic community expects him to write as the authority while the experienced secondary teacher wants to hear ideas from an authority.