The Heart Knows Something Different: Teenage Voices from the Foster Care System

by Youth Communication

Book Overview

There are more than 450,000 children living in foster care. The Heart Knows Something Different collects over three dozen personal narratives by young writers, ages 15 to 20, and provides an insider's account of growing up in "the system." It takes us into a world largely hidden from public view, and attests to the mix of pain and fear, and sometimes hope, and sometimes even happiness that the foster care experience involves.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0892552182
• ISBN13: 9780892552184
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Persea Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 and higher

Customer Reviews

A Perfect Ten

It's way more than I expected it to be. Good read for anybody who is troubled or who has been troubled in their younger years, good for those who interact with foster youth, or for anybody interested. This book paints a candid picture of reality and just that. There's no attempt to persuade the reader's views on the system, although stories directly from foster youth shed light on the pluses and minuses of the system. This one stands out from the others in its class.

Takes you Inside Foster Care!

This book takes you inside the world of foster care, a place that, you find out quickly isn't somewhere you want to be. The voices of the children themselves tell the stories in this collection of essays. We see things as they actually are: siblings are split up and sometimes never reunited, children's loyalties between abusive or neglectful parents and the "system" are questioned, kids age out of the system and are left to a world they know nothing about without a family to guide them. It is all here. It is all true. I challenge you to read it and not have it make you think long and hard about the way "the system" works and how it affects the kids.