One Child By Torey Hayden [BOOKED]

At age six, Sheila had already endured a lifetime of horrors. Her mother abandoned her on a highway at age four; her alcoholic father neglected and traumatized her. Thus, it was scarcely a shock to anyone when the coarse, hate-filled child attacked a three-year-old boy, nearly burning him to death.

At such a tender age, Sheila's fate seemed inevitable - a lifetime in a psychiatric ward. Yet while the state awaited placement, they decided to put her in Hayden's special needs classroom.

Initially skeptical of a child with such a background, Hayden nonetheless did her best. Quickly, she glimpsed an intensely intelligent child, who longed for love and acceptance.

This wasn't to say it was an easy job. Nor was there any fairy-tale ending. Often, Sheila went into uncontrollable rages, damaging property, once even throttling pet gerbils when she perceived she had been wronged. Yet after glimpsing the inner Sheila, Torey Hayden refused to give up on her.

Then one day, several months after Sheila arrived in Hayden's classroom, the teacher received a call -- the psychiatric hospital was ready for Sheila. Despite having made a breakthrough with the child, would Sheila's life really be taken away before she had a chance to start it?

As always, Hayden's stories about the children with whom she has worked are deeply moving and memorable. By no means does she attempt to portray herself as a miracle worker; she freely admits her mistakes along with her triumphs as she merely dedicates her life to helping turn young lives around.

Readers interested in learning more about Sheila may be interested in the sequel, The Tiger's Child, which picks up when the girl is 13 and recently reunited with Hayden.

Typical American by Gish Jen

Typical American follows the lives of three Chinese immigrants in New York: Ralph Chang, his sister Theresa, and Theresa's roommate Helen, who becomes Ralph's wife. Theresa becomes a doctor, Ralph earns a Ph. D. in mechanical engineering and gets a job teaching at a local college, and Ralph and Helen have two daughters.As they each become caught up in achieving the American dream, they must make difficult choices about the importance of success, family loyalty, and the people they hope to become.

Jen Gish breaks from the paradigmatic use of Chinatown that has been a staple of Chinese immigrant narratives. This also removes the Changs from the clutches of parental demands or strict Chinatown societal codes. Rather than settling in an established Chinese community for moral and financial support Ralph, Helen and Theresa remain very isolated in their new life in America. This isolation from the "parental' or "traditional" elements of Chinese culture enables Jen to illustrate the conflicts inherent to cultural assimilation within the context of the individual rather than a group. And, so, while the characters strive mightily to achieve "typical American" status-the full middle class lifestyle with all the accouterments and benefits that implies-they nevertheless still see many of the traits and behaviors attendant to that lifestyle through Chinese eyes and refer to these behavioral traits in Anglos pejoratively as "typical American" Behavior. Thus they are in the position of decrying what they actively seek to attain, thus brilliantly illustrating the often-schizoid process of assimilation.

This is a wry, ironic, emotionally complex novel that is well worth reading.

Teacher Man by Frank McCourt [SOLD]

Frank McCourt's "Teacher Man" is a spellbinding lyrical ode to the craft of teaching. It is a rollicking, delightful trek across nearly thirty years in New York City public school classrooms that will surely please his devout legion of fans, and perhaps win some new admirers too. You will find much of the same plain, yet rather poetic, prose and rich dark humor that defines his first book, along with his undiminished, seemingly timeless, skill as a mesmerizing raconteur.

All McCourt wanted to do was teach, which wasn't easy in the jumbled bureaucracy of the New York City school system. Pretty soon he realized the system wasn't run by teachers but by sterile functionaries. "I was uncomfortable with the bureaucrats, the higher-ups, who had escaped classrooms only to turn and bother the occupants of those classrooms, teachers and students. I never wanted to fill out their forms, follow their guidelines, administer their examinations, tolerate their snooping, adjust myself to their programs and courses of study.”

As McCourt matured in his job, he found ingenious ways to motivate the kids: have them write "excuse notes" from Adam and Eve to God; use parts of a pen to define parts of a sentence; use cookbook recipes to get the students to think creatively. A particularly warming and enlightening lesson concerns a class of black girls at Seward Park High School who felt slighted when they were not invited to see a performance of Hamlet, and how they taught McCourt never to have diminished expectations about any of his students

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt [SOLD]

The author begins his memoir with the voice of a narrator: describing people, events, etc. The writing is incredibly honest. It flows from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, page to page. McCourt puts himself right back into the mind of his younger self, and seems to be talking and thinking just as he would from ages 4 through a young man.

He speaks of his family. His father that couldn't keep his wages in his pocket on pay day, and could not make it home without stopping for a pint (or two) along the way. Yet a man who seemed to understand his young sons, and always had what seemed sage advice and a great love for his children. His mother's suffering, with the loss of children dyeing, trying to make do for her family by begging, and did whatever it took to keep her children warm and fed. He writes quite honestly, about his schooling, his relatives,the many illnesses he and the family went through, his taking to petty thefts to keep from starving, discovering his sexuality, the jobs he had to do, and his great desire to go back to America, where he was born.

The stories are sad, and will tug at your heartstrings, but the humor he uses in describing the sometimes dehumanizing events (having to empty and clean disgusting chamber pots among them) make this a stand out read instead of a woe-is-me theme.The characters jump off the page, you can hear them speak with their thick Irish accents, or in some cases New York. He writes of all the doors that were closed in his face, when he needed help, but you can feel the tenacity with which he continued to move his life forward.

If you're looking for a touching yet nice-to-read book, Angela's Ashes is something you're looking for.