by Robby DeBoer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 1994
A sincere but tedious rehashing of the ``Baby Jessica'' saga by former adoptive mother DeBoer. In the summer of 1993, Baby Jessica, now known as Anna Schmidt, was returned to her biological parents after a two-year court battle that captured worldwide attention. Shortly after relinquishing her baby for adoption, birth mother Cara Schmidt began to mourn deeply. To cope with her pain, according to DeBoer, Cara attended a meeting of Concerned United Birthparents (CUB), whose philosophy is that ``short of kidnapping and murder, this [separation from her baby] is the most horrible, unnatural loss a mother can endure.'' And so Cara Schmidt began her efforts to regain the baby she had hastily and conveniently surrendered. It is DeBoer's contention that had Cara not connected with CUB, Baby Jessica would be living a secure life with her adoptive parents. DeBoer strives for objectivity, but generally fails. Just as Cara and Dan Schmidt appear never see the DeBoers as anything more than temporary caretakers who have made a media circus out of their tragedy, the DeBoers see the Schmidts as mere ``baby machines'' who created a product that they initially abandoned. The result is ugly. Dan Schmidt is portrayed as a violent and negligent father whose court papers show that ``he has previously failed to raise or support his other two children.'' On the other side, DeBoer writes, a handful of criminal dirt committed by her husband, Jan, as a teenager is dug up and slung. While Jan considered fleeing the country with Jessica—a rare revelation here—Robby leapt to the media to publicize her plea that ``the bias of the courts towards biology'' would jeopardize her daughter's well-being. A sometimes absorbing, often superficial memoir that is far less meaty than the New Yorker's treatment of a year ago. (Two eight-page inserts of b&w photos, not seen) (First printing of 100,000; first serial to Redbook; author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-47458-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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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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