An exceedingly forthright and moving story of adoptive and foster childcare.
Preschool teacher Johnson offers an in-depth look at what happens when the foster care system fails to work the way it should.
In most people’s conceptions of foster care and adoption, the only relationship that matters is between child and caregiver. However, Johnson, who ultimately populated her home with eight foster and adopted children, felt compelled to extend her love to the kids’ biological parents, as well. It was part of her own ongoing efforts to provide the youngsters in her care with the lives she felt they deserved. Johnson’s challenging relationships with birth parents provide this book with emotional intensity, as when one child’s teenage mom and 50-something father repeatedly tested her “same team” strategy, as well as her strong Christian faith. Johnson recalls her own “countless tirades about how many resources—human and otherwise—were being wasted on these parents who didn’t have the decency to show up for a visit with their children.” Indeed, she writes that it affected her own attitude toward her “same team” concept: “At certain points in the process, I practically tried to burn down the clubhouse and the whole stadium.” Over the course of this memoir, Johnson consistently comes across as a relatable Everywoman who struggled mightily to put her faith into action. The response she gave to incredulous friends and family—who wondered how she managed to deal with Illinois’ byzantine foster care system—also shows her keen sense of perspective, comparing her own situation to a woman who lost their spouse in an accident, another who lost a child, and still others who live in war zones: “How the hell do those women do it? And who am I to even compare my life to theirs?” Johnson’s solution was to do everything possible to be open with her children about their adoptive origins and to include the “first parents” in their lives as much as she could—even when that meant giving her kids up to visits where they were fed “vending machine food and…red Mountain Dew.”
An exceedingly forthright and moving story of adoptive and foster childcare.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9781736130360
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Phoenix Media & Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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