by Kathy Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 2006
Be forewarned: After you read this beautiful account of the small triumphs and not-so-small heartbreaks of foster care, you...
Harrison (Another Place at the Table, 2003) has opened her home to more than 100 foster children. In this memoir, she focuses on just one.
Foster parents know that, unless they are prepared to take a child on very short notice, they shouldn’t answer the phone late Friday afternoon. Seasoned foster mom Kathy Harrison is a little surprised to find herself not only accepting just such a last-minute placement, but choosing, from among the three children for whom her social worker was trying to find beds, the one who sounded the most challenging. At six, Daisy was taking an inordinate number of psychiatric medications, she didn’t talk much, and she refused to eat. She twirled in circles or flapped her hands like wings when anxious. But after several weeks with the Harrisons, Daisy, well, blossoms, emerging as a confident, sharp child. Eventually, she trusts Kathy enough to reveal details of heinous sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend. Though Harrison takes pains to make clear that children at every socio-economic level are abused and neglected, she allows that one wouldn’t have expected Daisy’s family to land in the social-services net—Daisy’s grandmother is a well-heeled attorney, and her mom a flaky feng-shui devotee. Helping Daisy adjust to her new surroundings isn’t the only task on Harrison’s plate. Her daughter Karen, 13, has just been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, and another foster child, Jazzy, 8, is leaving the Harrison family to be adopted. This is good news, but Jazzy, who feels at home with the Harrisons, doesn’t want to go. Throughout, Harrison is endearingly matter-of-fact, even humble, about the hard but rewarding work to which she has been called.
Be forewarned: After you read this beautiful account of the small triumphs and not-so-small heartbreaks of foster care, you may find yourself scanning the web, trying to find out how to become a foster parent.Pub Date: April 6, 2006
ISBN: 1-58542-465-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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