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Beautiful child
By Torey Hayden
Book description:
Hayden has chronicled experiences from her long career as a
special education teacher in several books, including One Child
and The Tiger's Child. Successes in this difficult and often
frustrating field can be few and hard-won, which Hayden deftly
illustrates while simultaneously offering hope and joy in small
victories. This time she brings to life the story of a scruffy
seven-year-old, Venus, who is so unresponsive that Hayden searches
for signs of deafness, brain damage or mental retardation.
Familiar with Venus's siblings, other teachers warn Hayden not to
expect much from Venus. Yet the author is relentless in her
attempt to diagnose the cause of Venus's "almost catatonic" state,
which is punctuated by occasional violent outbursts. Suspecting
"elective mutism," a refusal to talk "for psychological reasons,"
Hayden persists in trying to draw Venus out. Her patient
dedication finally pays off when the girl shows an interest in
She-Ra, Princess of Power comic books. From there, a story of
domestic abuse, removal to foster care and a slow emergence from
silent isolation unfolds. However, Venus is not the only
fascinating character here. Hayden sets Venus's bittersweet and
complex story against the backdrop of other students, including
one boy with a very high IQ but behavioral problems, another with
Tourette's syndrome and a girl who inexplicably spouts
sophisticated poetry and talks to her hand. In this first-person
narrative, Hayden also shares her own thoughts, worries and
strained relationship with a mismatched classroom aide, creating a
rich tapestry of the dynamics of a group of special needs
youngsters and the adults who try to help them.
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Turning Stones: My days and nights with children at risk
By Marc Parent
Book description:
Marc Parent worked for four years as a caseworker for Emergency
Children's Services in New York, acting as the final protector of
children from abusive parents, as "the one on the front line �the
last hope for a kid in trouble." His job was to make house calls and
decide if a child needed to be removed at once. He has selected
eight cases illustrating the extreme pressures of the work and
indicating why it is that the system so often fails in its mission.
He recounts unsparingly how three years into his job he made a fatal
mistake, failing to recognize the plight of a little boy who later
died of starvation. This compelling account is an important
documenting of the weaknesses of the child support system.
Book reviews:
"In this outstanding work of social
commentary, Parent describes the harrowing conditions he worked
under and the brutalization he witnessed during the four years he
was employed as a caseworker by New York City's Emergency Children's
Services. His job was to respond in the night to calls made at those
hours regarding children in life-threatening situations. He would
then visit their homes and decide whether the children should be
removed. Inadequately trained and without sufficient supervision, he
and his co-workers were forced to balance dangerous situations
against taking often unwilling children from their homes into
tenuous foster-care arrangements. Among other horrendous encounters
during his tenure, Parent dealt with an eight-year-old with venereal
disease and a mother who threw her child out the window. Believing
that child abuse can happen in rural as well as urban areas, Parent
convincingly argues for public scrutiny of child welfare agencies as
well as a societal commitment to protecting children."
"Parent, an advocate for child protection, has written a poignant
account of his four years as a caseworker for New York City's Child
Welfare Administration. This book reflects his belief that our
society should not abandon powerless children and that small things
can make a positive difference in a deprived child's life. Working
the graveyard shift and often having to remove abused children from
their homes in the middle of the night, Parent learned firsthand of
the trauma in these children's lives. Perhaps the most important
aspect of his book is his ability to show the children's emotions by
placing the reader "inside" their heads. Also valuable is the
insight into the weaknesses of the bureaucratic system of child
protection, where poorly trained young caseworkers find themselves
working in often violent and overwhelming situations. A personal
rather than a scholarly work, this will be of interest to concerned
lay readers as well as those working with children.
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What happened to Johnnie Jordon? The story of a child turning
violent
By Jennfer Toth
Book reviews:
Jennifer Toth tells the ghastly story of Johnnie Jordan, a
14-year-old boy from "Toledo's ghetto" who had worked his way
through 19 foster homes before finding himself placed with Charles
and Jeannette Johnson, an elderly couple who agreed to take him
in. For reasons that remain obscure, Jordan murdered Mrs. Johnson.
Toth presents him as an example of "an apparently new phenomenon
of young, rage-filled killers taking lives with motiveless passion
or no remorse." They've struck all over the country � Jonesboro,
Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon; and Littleton, Colorado. What
Happened to Johnnie Jordan? is exhaustively researched and
includes detailed interviews with people who touched Jordan's life
� family, psychologists, lawyers � plus Jordan himself, from
behind bars. Jordan may be a monster, but Toth identifies plenty
of other villains, such as the social-service agencies responsible
for him that still refuse to accept any blame for what happened.
When society fails vulnerable children such as Jordan, it allows
them to become "superpredators," writes Toth. "There is never
justification for murder. But there are reasons why children kill
and why, if we do not heed their cries of pain and intervene
decisively to help them, we will see countless more children who
murder," she concludes. This is a troubling book, but one that we
ignore at our peril.
"In January 1996, just outside Toledo, 14-year-old Johnnie Jordan
killed Jeanette Johnson, his elderly foster mother. The crime
horrified the community and confounded those who knew the victim
and perpetrator, in part because there was no clear motive; Jordan
claimed to like Johnson and her husband and wanted to stay with
them. But as journalist Toth (Orphans of the Living) reveals in
this powerful and unsettling book, Jordan rarely had any control
over his own life. Through interviews with the adolescent,
lawyers, police and parole officers, social workers, psychologists
and others close to the case, Toth pieces together the dark saga,
from its roots to its aftermath. Scenes from Jordan's childhood,
which was torn apart by an "extremely chaotic, abusive, and
neglectful family," are particularly haunting. Both his parents
were drug addicts and his father was a convicted rapist and
pedophile. Before arriving at the Johnsons' home, Jordan had been
in nearly 20 foster or group homes, and he'd already exhibited
violence. Yet as he traveled through the foster care and juvenile
corrections systems, he repeatedly fell through the proverbial
cracks. Jordan's fate is not a surprise: he confessed to the
crime, was tried and convicted in adult court and sentenced to
life imprisonment with parole eligibility after 30 years. "The
greatest tragedy in cases like Johnnie's," Toth reflects, "is that
many teachers and caregivers read danger signs... but fail to act
until it is too late. There are almost always warnings." Though
there is no happy ending, Toth concludes her engaging narrative by
suggesting concrete changes in the foster care system, adjustments
that could prevent more bloodshed. The thoughtfulness and care she
exhibits throughout provide a glimmer of hope in an otherwise
bleak landscape."
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One child
by Tory Hayden
Book description:
Six-year-old Sheila never spoke, she never cried, and her eyes were
filled with hate. Abandoned on a highway by her mother, abused by an
alcoholic father, Sheila was placed in a class for the hopelessly
retarded after she committed an atrocious act of violence against
another child. everyone said Sheila was lost forever � everyone except
teacher Torey Hayden. Torey fought to reach Sheila, to bring the abused
child back from her secret nightmare, because beneath the austic rage,
Torey saw in Sheila the spark of genius. And together they embark on a
wondrous journey filled with love and a journey journey sustained by a
young teacher's inspiring bravery and devotion.
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The tiger's child
By Torey Hayden
Book description:
This is Hayden's sequel to her best-selling One Child (1981),
the story of an abandoned autistic child. Here, Hayden describes
in detail what happened to Sheila from the age of six to 16, a
decade filled with tension, a search for understanding, and
profound moments of love. During the course of this fast-paced
narrative, Hayden's career develops from classroom teacher to
practicing psychologist in a private clinic. Throughout this time,
she keeps track of Sheila, torn between her professional knowledge
of what constitutes appropriate treatment for the young woman and
her instinct to be the good mother. This book is not only
interesting as a biography of a seriously disturbed child but as a
portrayal of a working psychologist. Anyone involved with children
will find it enlightening.
Book review:
"Torey Hayden deserves the kind of respect I can't give many
people. She isn't just valuable, she's incredible. The world needs
more like Torey Hayden. What ever became of Sheila?
When special-education teacher Torey Hayden wrote her first book
One Child almost two decades ago, she created an international
bestseller. Her intensely moving true story of Sheila, a silent,
profoundly disturbed little six-year-old girl touched millions.
From every corner of the world came letters from readers wanting
to know more about the troubled child who had come into Torey
Hayden's class as a "hopeless case," and emerged as the very
symbol of eternal hope within the human spirit.
Now, for all those who have never forgotten this endearing child
and her remarkable relationship with her teacher, here is the
surprising story of Sheila, the young woman.
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Finding fish: A memoir
By
Antwone Q. Fisher
Book description:
Thank goodness Antwone Fisher's story has a happy ending �
otherwise, his searing memoir would be nearly unbearable to read. His
father was killed by a gunshot blast shortly before he was born in 1959;
his 17-year-old mother gave him up for foster care. Unfortunately for
Antwone, his foster mother was as successful at browbeating and
demeaning her many wards as she was at lying to the Child Welfare
authorities. His working-class African American neighborhood in
Cleveland became purgatory for a sensitive, intelligent boy who quickly
turned into a withdrawn underperformer at school. In Fisher's
blow-by-blow account of his childhood, his sexual abuse at the hands of
a female neighbor is hardly more horrifying than his foster mother's
relentless cruelty � especially because respectable, churchgoing Mrs.
Pickett justifies it all as due to the boy's wicked faults. Readers will
be relieved when she dumps 15-year-old Antwone back at the Child Welfare
office, even though he will endure homelessness and a scary spell of
criminal employment, before an 11-year stint in the Navy provides him
with a way forward. Grim though his tale is, Fisher displays throughout
it the grit and stubborn integrity that kept him sane. He musters up
some understanding (not forgiveness) for the dreadful Mrs. Pickett, and
his eventual meeting with his burned-out mother is painfully poignant.
He certainly deserves the beautiful wife and cute two-year-old daughter,
cooking pancakes for him in the book's closing and redemptive scene.
Book review:
"An unflinching look at the adverse effects foster care can have on a
child's life, this stunning autobiography rises above the pack of
success fables from survivors of America's inner cities. Born in the
1950s to an underage single mother serving time in prison for murder,
Fisher was placed in the home of a staunch minister and his wife, who
appeared to be a loving couple to the series of foster care workers who
monitored their home in one of Cleveland's working-class neighborhoods.
Writing in a deft mix of elegant prose and forceful dialect, Fisher is
especially adept at dramatizing the tactics of control and intimidation
practiced by his foster mother on the abused children in her care, such
as crushing Fisher's self-esteem by calling him worthless, shaming one
girl after she began her period and making the boys bathe with Clorox.
(Fisher supports his detailed recollections with excerpts from the
actual foster-care records.) An added bonus is the author's vibrant
recreation of several key black neighborhoods in Cleveland during the
golden age of the Black Power movement, before the areas disappeared
under the aegis of urban "renewal." If a major feature of survival
memoirs is their ability to impress readers with the subject's long,
steady climb to redemption and excellence, then this engrossing book is
a classic." |
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The pact: Three young men make a promise and fulfill a dream
By Sampson Davis; Rameck Hunt and George Jenkins
Book description:
Growing up in broken homes in a crime-ridden area of Newark, N.J., these
three authors could easily have followed their childhood friends into
lives of drug-dealing, gangs and prison. They tell harrowing stories of
being arrested for assault and mugging drug dealers, and of the lack of
options they saw as black teenagers. But when their high school was
visited by a recruiter from a college aimed at preparing minority
students for medical school, the three friends decided to make something
of their lives. Through the rigors of medical and dental school, and a
brief detour into performing rap music at local clubs, they supported
each other. Today, Davis and Hunt are doctors, and Jenkins is a dentist;
the men's Three Doctors Foundation funds scholarships to give other poor
black kids the same opportunities. The authors aren't professional
readers, and it shows. They're clearly reading aloud, not speaking
spontaneously. But the authenticity of their urban accents and the
earnestness and sincerity in their voices give their inspiring tale an
immediacy that would be lost with a professional narrator |
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Another place at the table: A story of shattered childhoods
redeemed by love
By Kathryn Harrison
Book description:
With so much awful publicity surrounding foster parenting,
Harrison's story of opening her home to foster children, three of
whom she later adopted, is tender and inspiring. It is also filled
with heartbreaking truths about abused and neglected children and
a social service system that is overburdened and occasionally
negligent itself. For 13 years, Harrison, along with her husband,
three biological sons, and three adopted daughters, has fostered
abandoned infants, runaway teens, disabled preschoolers, and
children discharged from psychiatric hospitals. The Harrisons also
became hot-line foster parents, willing to accept children in
emergency situations with little or no notice. Harrison describes
the process social workers use to place children, the horrifying
circumstances of the children involved, and the training required
of foster parents. She brings her story home by focusing, with
heart-rending details, on four troubled children, including Danny,
a developmentally delayed eight-year-old; Lucy, a deeply depressed
eight-year-old abandoned by her mother; seven-month-old Karen,
eventually adopted by the Harrisons and later diagnosed with
Tourette's syndrome; and Sara, a six-year-old who had been
sexually abused. Vanessa Bush
Book
review:
For more than a decade, Kathy Harrison has sheltered a shifting
cast of troubled youngsters-the offspring of prostitutes and
addicts; the sons and daughters of abusers; and teenage parents
who can't handle parenthood. What would motivate someone to give
herself over to constant, largely uncompensated chaos? How does
she manage her extraordinary blended family? Why would anyone
voluntarily take on her job?
Harrison is no saint, but an ordinary woman doing heroic work. In
Another Place at the Table, she describes her life at our social
services' front lines-centered around three children who, when
they come together in her home, nearly destroy it. Danny, age
eight, is borderline mentally retarded and a budding pedophile (a
frequent result of sexual abuse in boys). No other family will
take him in. Tough, magnetic Sara, age six, is dangerously
promiscuous (a typical manifestation of abuse in girls). Karen,
six months, shares Danny's legal advocate, who must represent the
interests of both. All three living under the same roof will lead
to an inevitable explosion-but for each, Harrison's care offers
the greatest hope of a reinvented childhood. |
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