As a digital subscriber, you’ll receive unlimited access to Horn Book web exclusives and extensive archives, as well as access to our highly searchable Guide/Reviews Database.
To access other site content, visit The Horn Book homepage.
To continue you need an active subscription to hbook.com.
Subscribe now to gain immediate access to everything hbook.com has to offer, as well as our highly searchable Guide/Reviews Database, which contains tens of thousands of short, critical reviews of books published in the United States for young people.
Thank you for registering. To have the latest stories delivered to your inbox, select as many free newsletters as you like below.
No thanks. Return to article
(4)
YA
Forgotten Youth series.
This dense volume chronicles the plight of children in foster care. The book cites numerous reasons for children entering the system--including parents who cannot or will not care for their offspring--and details children's resultant fear, anger, and confusion. Varied first-person accounts are presented along with statistics about successful and failed adoptions and helpful organizations' contact information. Reading list, websites. Ind.
182 pp.
| RoadRunner
| April, 2015
|
TradeISBN 978-1-937054-34-2$18.95
(4)
YA
The author, an Oklahoman who now directs youth ministries, describes growing up in poverty, neglected and abused. Eventually he's placed with a foster family that supports his natural athletic talent, provides stability and structure, and helps him imagine a different future. Although the prose lacks polish, the narrative is affecting. An honest portrait of a tough life painstakingly transformed by determination and hope.
(4)
YA
Inspirational speaker and social crusader Rhodes-Courter follows her heartfelt memoir about growing up in foster care (Three Little Words) with this volume about her life as a college student, newlywed, and mother (foster, biological, and adoptive). Rhodes-Courter pulls no punches; her no-filter depiction of the foster-care system, her biological family, and herself is fiercely real, if somewhat metaphor-heavy and unpolished.
232 pp.
| Simon
| January, 2014
|
TradeISBN 978-1-4424-8168-8$17.99
|
EbookISBN 978-1-4424-8170-1
(4)
YA
With Lisa Wysocky. This memoir focuses on modern child-slavery smuggling. Native Egyptian Hall (born Shyima Hassan) recounts how her poor family sold her at the age of eight to a family who then moved to the United States, where she was fortunate enough to be rescued by child services. Although dry and sometimes uneven, this is an important, moving story of a disturbing worldwide issue.
312 pp.
| Atheneum
| January, 2008
|
TradeISBN 978-1-4169-4806-3$17.99
(4)
YA
As a young child, Rhodes-Courter was endlessly shuttled among state facilities and foster homes (some horrifyingly abusive) before finally being adopted by a loving family. Now in her early twenties, Ashley reflects on the experience in this heartfelt memoir. Her writing is unpolished, but one gets the sense that the words are fiercely, authentically her own.
(4)
YA
Youth with Special Needs series.
A fictional story about children taken from an abusive parent and placed in the foster care system alternates with illustrated factual sections providing information about foster homes, adoptions, and the legal and social processes for helping children. The dialogue is contrived, but the book is an accessible resource. Directory. Bib., glos., ind.
125 pp.
| Front
| August, 1999
|
TradeISBN 1-886910-40-5$$15.95
(4)
YA
Translated by Wanda Boeke.
Photographs by
Pieter Kers.
Eighteen Netherlanders ages fourteen to twenty relay the circumstances (typically parental abuse and neglect) that led them to live independently, in reform school, or in foster, youth, or transition homes. The first-person narratives, based on interviews, are intriguing but provide only an abbreviated sense of who these young people are. The black-and-white photos of the book's subjects are dark and grainy but artful.