Torey L. HaydenReseñas

I found this book much harder to get into than the other books by Torey Hayden I have read. After quick a long gap between reading sessions I decided to give it one more chance before putting it aside and this time I did go on and read the whole book. I think perhaps the problem was that it featured three people but only one really seamed to co to any sort of resolve.

I enjoy Torey Hayden's writing and was delighted to find a new one from her. It is a wonderful look at her work and she really helps us to see very fully the inner lives of the children she works with. I was especially grateful with this one to have an epilogue that let us know what happened to this child after she moved away from Ms Hayden's area. I found it fascinating to see how social services operate in another country. Doesn't seem like anyone has found a perfect solution.

I read several of Torey Hayden's wonderful books before Library Thing started ---how well do I remember them? I'm thinking I need to go back and find her earlier works to catch up. She is so descriptive in her experiences working with children. It takes a very special person to do what she manages to do.

While I enjoyed Torey Hayden's writing style and gift for character development, I was disturbed somewhat about how she was the hero and everyone else seemed against her to an extent. As someone who adopted three kids with special needs and fosters other kids, I would have been angered if one of my kids were depicted in one of the author's books. Our kids have to work incredibly hard for any small gain, and school is a relatively small part of their days. Our kids struggle with sleeping, eating, dressing and interacting with other people (mine are all behaviorally challenged as well). To give credit to only one person when it is almost always a team of individuals working together to bring out the light in a child is really misleading.

De zevenjarige Venus Fox spreekt niet meer, luistert niet, reageert nergens op. Men vermoedt dat ze doof is of misschien een hersenbeschadiging heeft. Ze komt terecht in het klasje van juf Torey Hayden, die gespecialiseerd is in kinderen met ernstige gedragsproblemen

This beautiful and deeply moving tale recounts educational psychologist Torey Hayden's battle to unlock the emotions of a troubled and sexually abused child who, with the help of Hayden, was finally able to overcome her dark past and realise her full potential. Six-year-old Sheila was abandoned by her mother on a highway when she was four. A survivor of horrific abuse, she never spoke, never cried, and was placed in a class for severely retarded children after committing an atrocious act of violence against another child. Everyone thought Sheila was beyond salvation - except her teacher, Torey Hayden. With patience, skill, and abiding love, she fought long and hard to release a haunted little girl from her secret nightmare - and nurture the spark of genius she recognised trapped within Sheila's silence. This is the remarkable story of their journey together - an odyssey of hope, courage, and inspiring devotion that opened the heart and mind of one lost child to a new world of discovery and joy.

Gripande och bra berättad sann historia. det är skrämmande hur många barn som far illa.½

Haydens böcker är intressant och skrämmande läsning då det ju bygger på verkliga fall. Denna bok är inte lika gripande som hennes första bok rävungen men ger ändå en inblick i många barns utsatthet. Klart läsvärd.½

n Silent Boy, Torey Hayden introduces us to Kevin, an elective mute and her efforts to break his years of self enforced silence. While not seeking to undermine the work which she undertakes with damaged children, this book carries the usual critism of social services and how they fail children, while Ms Hadyen presents herself as an avenging saviour. I feel certain that if social workers were given the resources which they greatly need in order to work individually with children in a therapeutic manner they would have the same results as Ms Hayden. Her encounter with a needy child outside of her professional capacity is extremely enlightening as Ms Hayden presents herself as judgemental and lacking in the same compassion which she provides to those children she is paid to communicate with.

An interesting story of a damaged child. I don't know where Torey found her patience. There were many times that I just wanted to shake this child. I appreciate the way Ms Hayden shows the girl's slow growth and I especially liked the epilogue in this book. Well done.

I dare you not to feel something for Jessie and her story. I was so fascinated by Jessie's story that I read this book in two days. The deeper that I got into Jessie's story; my heart broker for her. However at the same time I was memorized by the big stories that she told Torey.

Jessie's story tugged at my heart. Her story was filled with abuse. She just wanted someone to love her. Torey helped Jessie to find her voice. As Torey shows it the journey is a long one filled with tons of patience, an open mind, care, love, and knowing the ultimate goal is to find a "forever home".

There were times when I was shocked by Jessie's behavior and the stories she told but as I learned more abut her "true" story; I understood better why she acted the way she did. This book is worth your time to read.

This is Torey Hayden's first book in over 15 years. She is a psychologist and a special education teacher and her earlier books dealt with troubled children in a classroom setting. This book is different because Torey is working with a child in Wales as a volunteer due to work issues when she moved from the US to Wales.

This book is about Jessie. She is a 9 year old girl in a group home whose parents don't want her anymore because of the trouble she causes. Jessie lies, steals and starts fires and has been diagnosed as having reactive attachment disorder (RAD). Attachment disorders arise when children are deprived of the all-important close bonds with trustworthy adults that allow them to develop emotionally and thrive. Torey has been asked to spend some time with Jessie every week to try to find out the underlying causes of her behavior. At first, it's very difficult because Jessie lies about everything - she says that she has a brother, she says she won't eat certain foods and her lies go on and on. Torey needs a lot of patience and understanding to try to reach Jessie but she continues to try. The question throughout the book is whether Torey will be able to help Jessie in the limited time that she spends with her each week or will Jessie turn her away like she has everyone else in her past?

This was an interesting emotional book about one person trying to make a difference in someone's life. Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

This was fairly pulp-type reading, I got through the book very quickly. The author is a special needs teacher & has written a whole series of books about the "poor" children she's worked with (but who's stories she doesn't mind using for profit...there's no real educational or informative angle on these things). It didn't sit right with me that this is apparently a real case, but obviously changed to "protect the innocent" to the point where she could have probably made up anything. I also don't like the fact how the blurb makes her out to be some sort of super teacher...its like she's using these cases to stoke the fire of her ego, when its not even clear how much has been altered. But, having said that, it was an interesting read & the case is very sad. She's not a bad writer, & unlike the blurb doesn't seem to really sing her own praises too much in the story even though some of the techniques she apparently used to get the girl to talk are quite interesting. I also liked that the conclusion wasn't a happily-ever-after cop out. I don't think I'll read any more of her books though, the whole Dave Pelzer thing turned me off stories of this type as they're never nearly introspective enough, they just come across as sensationalist to me.

Torey Hayden, psicologa infantile statunitense.
In questo libro parla in particolar modo di mutismo selettivo..
Mi ha straziato il cuore leggere quello che Cassandra, una bambina di nove, ha dovuto subire e di come piano piano con l'aiuto sensibile e mirato Torey riesca a fare breccia nel cuore di questa bambina ferita e spaventata..

Haven't read a Torey Hayden novel for a few years. This one didn't disappoint, though sad and disturbing I was hooked and didn't expect the plot to turn out as it did.

David has never has a permanent home or a real friend, but when he decides to try to hatch an owl egg with the help of a classmate, his life slowly begins to change for the better.

Ghost Girl by Torey Hayden
3.5 Stars

From The Book:
Jadie never spoke. She never laughed, or cried, or uttered any sound. Despite efforts to reach her, Jadie remained locked in her own troubled world—until one remarkable teacher persuaded her to break her self-imposed silence. Nothing in all of Torey Hayden's experience could have prepared her for the shock of what Jadie told her—a story too horrendous for Torey's professional colleagues to acknowledge. Yet a little girl was living in a nightmare, and Torey Hayden responded in the only way she knew how—with courage, compassion, and dedication—demonstrating once again the tremendous power of love and the resilience of the human spirit.

My Thoughts:
There is no nice, happily after-after, story book ending to this story of Jadie, a severely traumatized child who had so many different problems they were difficult to decide which was the most severe. It was finally determined that more than one thing may have been responsible for her condition...either separately or together.. She was either psychotic or was being ritually abused by members of an occult group. Torey Hayden was a young professional at the time...the beginning of her career and often found herself being made to feel inadequate by her older, more experienced colleagues who thought that they knew better...and to make mattes worse.... were not open to new ideas about special education and the needs of these special children. Hindsight is 20/20, and we all can look back later and wish we had seen the broader picture. Torey's honesty in writing about her own second thoughts made the story so much more compelling. I don't recommend this book to anyone that would object to reading the graphic...intense... dirty details about the life and treatment of an 8 year old girl...this is NOT fiction. I do however, applaud Torey Hayden's courage in telling the story.½

good book even though it was both happy and sad
torey l hayden is a good author

good book even though it was both happy and sad
torey l hayden is a good author

Review: Ghost Girl by Torey Hayden. This book is about child abuse. I recommend that only adults 18 or older read this. It’s about a eight year old girl who has a problem of being mutely uncommunicative to people she comes in contact with. She was placed in a special class at school with four other disabled students. She can talk but refuses to. She finally starts to trust the special educational teacher as the school year goes on. This child starts telling information to the teacher that is so hard to believe. She has the teacher confused and not really knowing if this little girl is fantasying or telling what is happening to her and her two younger sisters at home. It’s so unbelievable a child could make up all the sexual and satanically cruel abuse that she and her sisters go through ( very graphic at times). She tells about her ghost friend Tashee, her cat Jenny who died and how the Dallas Family on TV was connected to all this abuse. I even wondered how much of this could be true.

Statement: “With added Knowledge, I must admit that, incredible as it all sounds, there is no way to deny the similarities of Jadie’s stories to those of other reported cases of occult abuse. Jadie often talked about Miss Ellie and the others “having their faces on” or wearing “ghost cloths,” which may also account for her not recognizing any members of the group.”----Torey Hayden

After Torey had many meetings with the area schools psychiatrist they finally decided to tell the gruesome details that Jadie had been telling her teacher for months. (I have no idea why the teacher waited so long to bring the matter to the social services.) Jadie had a lot of problems and being mute with other’s only made it tougher for Torey to try and help little Jadie. Everyone wanted to hear the details from Jadie. As the story went on Jadie finally told someone else with great fear and anxiousness.
I don’t want to get into anymore of the story. I want other readers to have their own opinions of what really was going on and find their own truth of the issue. It can be read in a day. Fast reading but some horrifying graphic details. In fact the book was an eye opener……..

Review: Beautiful Child by Torey Hayden. An emotional but wonderful true story for us all to read.

Torey is a trained specialty teacher who cares and provides many different skills to her beautiful gifted students. This year her class consisted of five all day unstable young children and other children who came off and on throughout the day. All her students are equally cared for but sometimes she has a student that needs more understanding and care then another. Without taking time away from the others she spends a lot of her free time with this one seven year old child named Venus.

The small child never spoke, listened, or even acknowledged the presence of another human being around her. However, if she was outside in the school yard and someone accidentally bumped into her, Venus would release a frightening rage for others to witness. She would display piercing screeches, and ravaging aggressive kicks, bites to who she thinks is going to harm her. For Torey this was a trying, perplexing and ultimately serious case but she struggled and was propelled to find some understanding to this young girl’s life. She knew it would be a strenuous journey and probably terrible revelations to learn about this unmanageable girl. Torey remained committed to helping a hopeless child, and patiently and lovingly leading Venus toward the light of a new day and brightening the days of her other students.

Torey is an extraordinary teacher determined never to abandon a child in need…..

I have read all of Torey Hayden's books. One Child is still, by far, my favorite.

The true story is about a teacher and her efforts to reach a child. I loved it.

Sheila has all the cards stacked against her, but Torey brings out the little girl in her.

An interesting description of working with children with a wide range of developmental problems.½