Book Reviews--One Child, by Torey Hayden

Well, I can't read fast enough to post book reviews as often as I'd like, and I only get random thoughts every so often. So, I am going to take this opportunity to review some old favorites.

Torey Hayden is one of my all-time favorite authors. I first became hooked on her books when I came across One Child in my college bookstore. All of her books are about her experiences as a special education teacher or a psychologist working with emotionally disturbed kids. I would classify her books as creative nonfiction; they're stories, not texts. The books of hers that I own are in tatters because I've read them so many times.

One Child was published in 1981. It is about a 6-year-old girl, Sheila, who suffered severe abuse and was abandoned on the highway by her mother. She lived with her father in a migrant camp, in a shack with no running water or electricity. Torey Hayden was a special education teacher teaching a self-contained class for emotionally disturbed children. Sheila ended up in her class after she burned a younger child. The plan was for Sheila to go into the children's unit at the state mental hospital as soon as there was room for her. In the meantime, she was placed in Torey's class.

One Child is about the bond between the student and teacher. Sheila had never really been able to bond with any adult before. They either mistreated her or were put off by her bad behavior before they could even really try to form a bond. Her behavior was horrible at first. On her first day in Torey's classroom, she killed several fishes in the aquarium in the classroom and poked their eyes out, just to give one example. But once she formed a bond with Torey, her behavior greatly improved, and school staff also discovered she had a genius IQ.

The book really had a profound effect on me. Seeing the change in Sheila over the period of time she was in Torey's class was just amazing. The book is a very fast read, due to both the writing style and the fascinating subject matter. I remember talking to my college roommate about it constantly the first time I read it.

One thing about this book that was difficult for many who read it was that it gives very few details on what happened to Sheila after her time in Torey's class. So, several years later, a sequel was published. In the prologue, the author mentions how many readers had written to her to ask what had happened to Sheila. The sequel was also quite fascinating and surprising in some ways. I will review the sequel in a later entry.