Introduction The book I read was ‘Three Little Words.’ It is written by Ashley Rhodes-Courter. This book was published in 2008. It was published in New York, New York. The book was published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers Company. It has a total of 336 pages. Three Little Words is organized in chapters. It has a total of 13 chapters. This book is a memoir so it is all about Ashley’s life in the foster care program. Each chapter talks about the hardships she went through at all the different foster homes. Ashley was taken into foster care when she was only three years old. She was in 14 different homes in a total of nine years. She had a brother, Luke that was also in the foster care program with her. They were separated multiple times, but always ended up at the same foster home together. It was not until Ashley was adopted that they were separated for good. Ashley’s mom was in prison multiple times, she was also a drug addict. She had visitation rights, but her visitations were always supervised. At these visitations she always promised Ashley that she was going to turn her life around, and get both her and Luke back. It never happened; as a result, Ashley had a lot of trust issues and a hard time believing people actually cared for her. Ashley was adopted and had a tough first couple of years adjusting to having a family. It wasn’t until about the end of the book where she finally got used to having a real family.
Summary
Lorraine Rhodes was a single
In the memoir Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter, Ashley did an outstanding job at showing me the challenges of foster care that I was not aware of. Throughout the whole memoir, Ashley has difficult things thrown at her that a girl her age shouldn’t and wouldn’t have known how to handle on her own. Ashley was taken away from her mother at only 3 years old, spending almost 10 years inside Florida’s foster care and was shuffled between 14 different homes, some quite abusive, before she was adopted at age 12 from a Children’s Home.
The poem “Wordsmith” by Susan Young follows the speaker watching their father as he constructs their house. Throughout the poem, their bond as father and child is made abundantly clear that they both love each other and value time spent together. Firstly, neither of them explicitly state how much they care but rather convey their familial feelings through actions instead. The speaker only watches their father “from the sidelines” (8) as they “watch with something akin to awe” (3) and never expresses their admiration aloud. Likewise, their father hardly outright states his affection but does it through working. The speaker understands this as they compare “all of the empty crevices” to “the words [the father] did not know how to say” (17). Another
Many children prefer to live with their parents, so they always think the foster care system is the bad guy. Living with strangers is bad enough for them but to add on some foster homes are abusive. Foster Care goes all the way back to the Old Testament, which the churches require widows to care for orphaned children (“Care” 1). It would be a miracle that someone would treat the children like their own. Many foster homes are abusive just like the one Ashley had. Year after year, the increase of foster families is due to drugs, abuse, economy, financial, and psychological problems (“Care” 1). In this society, there are many problems that lead children to have the feeling of worthlessness. It is really sad how many children are in families of irresponsible parents. Child abuse occurs when a parent or caretaker physically, emotionally, or sexually mistreats or neglects a child resulting in the physical, emotional, sexual harm, exploitation, or imminent risk (“Care” 1). It is disgusting how people would do this stuff to kids. These people have no heart and should be punished. Not everyone gets punished, but when the time comes, they will get what they deserve. Ashley’s book shows how her difficulties in foster homes were troubling. Many professional readers enjoy reading about her hard times.
In the book ‘Two or Three things i know for sure’, Dorothy Allison who tells her story growing up in a memoir and she uses her experiences to explain the two or The things she learned. What makes this her story stand out is not just that it 's a memoir but also because the main point is beauty and how women in her family were put down and abused because of their appearance. Throughout this whole book Dorothy tries to send out one important message on beauty which from my understanding beauty is not based on what men say or society says, we live in a world where a woman 's beauty is determined whether a man find hers beautiful and that must stop. Timothy Dow Adams who read’s ‘Two or Three things i know for sure’ writes his review on it, and his understanding of Dorothy Allison 's points of views.
The main idea of this book is to show everyone what child abuse and what living in different foster homes is like because most of the time people don’t usually talk about this topic due to sensitivity and this book helped everyone realize in a subtle way. I learned that this story isn’t just imagined, but it does indeed happen in real life. Children do live in households where the mother or father or whoever treats them unfair and that is what opened up my eyes.
They were immediately moved back to Florida to their new foster house which was not she pleasant. Their new foster home was packed to the brim full of foster kids. The conditions were terrible, and their foster parents screaming lunatics. Ashley and Luke were shortly moved out of that so called home and back to South Carolina to live with Adele. Ashley was sent back to Florida by herself this time. In Ashley’s life time she has been in 14 different foster homes. As well as talking to 44 caseworkers in only 9 years. Ashley at the age of 13, was finally adopted by this lovely
Foster children struggle immensely within healthcare and the foster care system. They are not receiving the correct support to help them when they go out into the real world.Within foster care, children and teens can either go into a foster home or a group home. Group homes can prevent permanent and authentic connections, while in foster homes, adolescents experience abuse and they are aware that there is no long term stability. For fifteen years, Betsy Krebs has worked with teens in the foster care
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons is the story of a young white girl, Ellen, who shares her life experiences over the course of two years. In that time, both of Ellen’s parents pass away, she moves multiple times to temporary homes until she finally finds a safe welcoming place in a foster home. Ellen’s story is rich because it is told in first person narrative and the readers are given context not only to what Ellen is experiencing, but context of the environment she is experiencing it in. To better understand and analyze Ellen, we can view Ellen, and everyone and everything in the novel from a biopsychosocial and systems perspective.
“When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy.” This beginning to the novel “Ellen Foster” by Kaye Gibbons, prepares readers to enter the world of one of the most influential and appealing young woman protagonists in modern fiction. Ellen Foster, the main character of the book by Gibbons, is, in my view, the most fascinating and remarkable character in the story. Readers are introduced to the narrator Ellen, a determined, yet mature and individualistic eleven-year-old, who lives in the South during the 1970s. She lives with an alcoholic father and a sick mother. Ellen must go through many hardships and face much trauma, when she foreshadows her mother’s death and the long journey in front of her by saying that a storm is coming- “I can smell the storm and see the air thick with the rain coming.” (p.7). Young Ellen must go through much more than the average child her age, but she knows that she will get her happy ending. After dealing with her abusive father and depressed mother, Ellen deserves to go to a happy family, one that will accept her with smiles on their faces and joy in their eyes. Even if it means jumping from foster home to foster home, from a cruel grandmother to a condescending aunt and cousin, Ellen will find the people that will love her, even if it means first having to go to those who don’t.
Many children can have social problems, identity problems, and many other difficulties. Many studies have been observing that the established structure of foster care can diminish the status of a foster child, and the view of the foster child has been stereotyped bringing many consequences and negative effects on the child. Throughout being in foster care, adolescents experienced low self-esteem and depression. The long term consequences of these conditions are slurred self-identity, social isolation, lack of a true family connection, low self-confidence, and lack of future goals. Also, they are more likely to separate themselves and experience depression and many other disorders, asking themselves what did they do wrong for their biological parents to leave them, or why doesn’t anyone truly want to take care and love them. If Jeannette and the other siblings would have been sent to foster care, Lori, Jeannette, and Brian would not have been motivated to move out on their own and pursue their dreams. If they would have been sent to foster care they also would not have each other, and as one can see, the Walls children were close to each other, often relying on one another for
It gives a positive message to other foster care children. This book tells them that when they had a sad and devastating life that they need to have faith and trust in the Lord that he will find them a loving and supportive family like Hollis. Apart from her foster care families and God of course, Hollis Woods has no family to love and support her.
Ashley Rhodes-Courter was only three years old when she was separated from her mother. She spent the next nine years bouncing from one foster family to another. Her mother, Lorraine, was only twenty years old, and she was also too young to take responsibilities for her two children. However, Ashley grew up earning straight “A’s” in her classes; she won a world-wide Harry Potter essay contest in New York, as well as many others. She was born in South Carolina, and later was taken to her first foster family in Florida. The closest family member she was kept with was her step-brother Luke, who didn’t share the same father. Later on, when Ashley was eleven years old, she got a new step-sister, who did not share the same father as she and Luke.
Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist, stated the first stage of human development is one of the most important. Because an infant is entirely dependent upon his or her caregivers, the quality of care plays an important role in the shaping of the child’s personality. In the case of Antowne Fisher, with his unfortunate circumstance of the death of his father and the incarceration of his mother, he lacked the care and love only parents can provide. However, once he entered the foster care system, Mrs. Nellie Strange, a savior of sort and his foster mother, became the tool in his development through the first stage of Erickson’s stages of development.
Chapter two mainly explains Jenson story and why he was taken away from home. Jenson’s case is not like most. It does not deal with child abuse but child neglect. He and his thirteen-year-old sister were left home alone while his mother went on vacation with her new boyfriend. The neighbor was the only one to know they were alone. She, however, did not feel the need to report it since they seemed to be in okay shape. One night though she had a change in heart after a party filled with drinking and drugs occurred. Both the children and Marie tried to contact the mother but, her phone was purposely shut off. This struck a nerve in Marie and made her believe an immediate removal was the safest. She placed the teen girl in a foster home outside
Jalapeno bagels is about a boy named Pablo whom cannot decide what to take to school for International Day. He wants to bring something from his parents’ baker. He wants something that represent his heritage but he cannot decide what to bring. His mother who is Mexican baked pan dulce and change bars. His father who is Jewish baked bagels and challah. Both of the bake good were good but while helping his parents with the bakery on Sunday morning, Pablo made a decision on what to bring. He decided to bring jalapeno bagels because they are a mixture both of his parents and just like him too. The multicultural representations in the story line is Mexican and Jewish. The pictures that were drawn in the book, the family has the same color of skin even though the parents are different cultures and the main character is mixed. There were no different skin colors.