Moving Images

By Deborah Cohen

Jimmel Warren, an 8-year-old with deep brown eyes and a shy grin, leans on the counter in the front office of the James Fenimore Cooper Elementary School in Milwaukee, shifting his lanky frame from one foot to the other.

With less than three weeks left in the school year, he is one of two new 2nd graders, a girl and a boy, enrolling at Cooper Elementary this May day.

Jimmel's rites of orientation begin with a hum of questions from members of the office staff. Does your mother have a phone? What about your auntie? Did you bring...