An unusual point/counterpoint journal by a mother and her son, chronicling the painful years the son suffered from autism and his remarkable recovery. Rob and Judy Barron's first child was born autistic. From infancy, Sean was totally unresponsive to direction and affection. He was also hyperactive, destructive, and full of rage. In her frustration and bewilderment, Judy responded by screaming, threatening, and spanking. When the Barrons finally sought help, the professionals argued what was then the party line about childhood autism: that it was caused by ``refrigerator parents,'' especially an unfeeling mother. (Current thinking is that the cause is probably biochemical.) Medication, behavior modification, and institutionalization were recommended. The Barrons eventually tried all three but preferred having Sean at home. Both parents believed that behind the bizarre behavior was a terrified but normal child. Although age and academic success—he was able to attend public school—modulated Sean's behavior, it was not until he was 17 that the real Sean emerged. He graduated from high school, went on to college, and is now living on his own, with a responsible job. Sean's story is told in stereo, through interspersed paragraphs by mother and son. Judy is heroically honest about her own lack of control. Sean, whose memories go back to toddlerhood, makes clear how pleased he was by repetition—e.g., switching lights on and off; how angry he got when his arbitrary ``rules'' were violated; and how frightened he became when a comfortable pattern—for instance, the order of school buses lined up at the end of the day- -was disturbed. What cured him? It's not clear: perhaps his mother's bulldog determination that he could be rescued, the shock of puberty, some reconnected neurons—or a combination of all three. This book offers hope but no plan for reclaiming other autistic lives. Notable for its window into the thoughts and feelings of an autistic child—and for its gratifyingly happy ending.
Pub Date: March 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-76111-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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