There's more than a whiff of "The Idiot's Guide" franchise to the look and feel of Bryan and Emily Hassel's roadmap to making the best possible school choice for your children and family. A "Light'ning List" at the start of each chapter gives you a bullet-point list of what's to come, so you can skip or skim. Anecdotes—some real, some not—portray various children and families as they negotiate the tricky terrain of finding the right school. And the first chapter even offers three strategies for using the book, ranging from "in-depth" to "quick action."

It's all part of a welcome effort by the Hassels to reassure parents and stiffen their spines for a rigorous school search process.

The underpinning of the book is the idea of a three-piece puzzle in the form of a triangle. At the top of this "Great Fit Triangle" is the piece representing "child needs," while at the base are "family needs" and "school offerings." The Hassels suggest that parents make it a priority to identify child needs—which are determined by basic learning capability, other skills talents and interests, along with the need for friends and the ability to pursue certain activities—then move on to assessing their family needs, which might include values about what their child learns in school, goals for their child, a parent community that they are comfortable with, and practical matters such as commuting time, the needs of other children in the family, and financial constraints.

The final piece of the puzzle is what the school offers, and how those offerings fit with the child needs and family needs parents have already identified.

The early chapters of the book offer step-by-step guidance to help parents understand their children as learners and as social beings, and how that might influence the type of school that will work best. They cover IQ testing and basic information on learning styles, along with definitions of terms such as analytical thinking, conceptual thinking, visual, auditory and kinesthetic/tactile learning. And they help parents make sense of common situations such as a mismatch between a child's IQ and school performance, or when a child is strong in math and weak in reading.

Throughout, the authors push parents or guardians to prioritize, and to understand that they are not looking for the perfect school, but rather for the best fit for their child.

A matter-of-fact approach to mental health challenges, learning disabilities, and behavior problems is a strength of this guide. Another is the straight-ahead approach to concern about values, morals, ethics, and religion. It can be reassuring for parents to be reminded that a school's approach to these issues will matter more for those who have limited time with their children after school; those who have difficulty talking about these issues with their children; and those whose children seem particularly easily swayed by peers... while for many other children, shortcomings in the curriculum can be made up for at home and elsewhere in the community.

In the second half of the book, parents and guardians can learn a lot—maybe more than they need—about different school designs, ways of assessing student work, standardized testing, etc. The authors urge adults on the hunt for the right school to challenge their own assumptions and look seriously at schools that they might be tempted to dismiss for reasons not directly connected to their child's learning—ie, a public school even if they are primarily interested in a Catholic education, a private school even if they consider them elitist, a school affiliated with a particular religion even if it is not their family faith.

Even if those schools don't wind up on a family's list of potential destinations, the authors note, parents and guardians will have learned something valuable about what is available to them.

Finally, the authors address the part of the process most people dread the most: working to try and win a child's acceptance to one of the schools they've identified as a good fit. Here, the message is one of staying organized, setting and meeting deadlines, making a good (but honest) impression, and understanding that your child may not win a spot in your top choice school.

Even if that happens, the Hassels argue, the journey will not have been in vain: you will have learned a lot about what your child needs, and can use that both to supplement his or her in-school experience through tutoring or classes outside school, and to work for changes in the school where you do wind up.

The book is backed up by a useful web site (http://www.PickyParent.com).

Susan Phillips is the editor of Connect for Kids, and a moderately picky parent.