5 Responses to “The Tiger’s Child”

• By Shannon Lloyd on Sep 5, 2010

  I THOUGHT THIS WAS A GREAT BOOK AND I RECEIVED IT FAIRLY QUICKLY AND IN GOOD CONDITION. I WAS EXTREMELY PLEASED!
  Rating: 3 / 5
• By Becky on Sep 5, 2010

  It’s not as good as One Child in my opinion. But, I’m glad to find out what happened to Sheila. Torey is an excellent writer and I love how she doesn’t whitewash anything, not even her personal life — she tells her stories in first person. GREAT!
  Rating: 5 / 5
• By Natalie on Sep 5, 2010

  I found this book in short depressing. That wonderful little girl we meet in One Child is long gone. She feels confused and angry at the world. To be honest I can see why she does. Not only her mother leaving her but her teacher as well? And then living with her good for nothing father. Probably being abused at foster homes… the list goes on and on. As far as I’m concerned she does have a reaason to rant and rave at the world. Also time and time again she mentions how things seemed different to her when she read One Child before it was published. It honestly made me wonder about if Mrs. Hayden is stretching any truths there. After all, we remember what we want about history. Or rather history is written by the victors, not the losers. I would be rather interested to reaad how Shelia would remember that time and compare it.

  This story just hit me as wrong. Maybe we saw more reality then we did in her other books. I’m not sure. All I know is this book didn’t sit well with me. I put it down several times and finished it more out of not having anything else to reaad then any other reason
  Rating: 1 / 5
• By Mary Katherine on Sep 5, 2010

  When I read fairy tales about abuse and neglect, it is hard for me b/c I can’t help thinking that real life is not that way and something is being sanitized or left out or presented with wishful thinking. One Child was like this. It was an excellent, outstanding book but it ended on a high note which turned out not to last. Still, what matters in the end is that Torey and Sheila reconnected with each other.

  They were disappointed at first. Torey wanted Sheila to prove her genius and/or display gratitude and/or show an approachable, resilient personality. Sheila, whose life had contained abuse and neglect after Torey left, showed none of those things. In fact she was really angry with Torey b/c she couldn’t understand why Torey came into her life, gave her a lot of good things, and left. The fact that it is what teachers do makes sense now but it didn’t make sense to Sheila when she was 6 years old.

  However they both want to maintain a relationship and so Sheila starts volunteering with Torey in working with disturbed children. This was a mistake in my opinion and I actually wondered why it was legal. Sheila was not just a minor but had also been really traumatized and there was no indication that she was in therapy. Torey meant well and Sheila really believed she could do it but neither of them was prepared for the stress on Sheila.

  A crisis came when a young boy who had been abandoned was about to perhaps be abandoned by his foster parents b/c maybe he isn’t “good” enough. Sheila gets upset and panics and some upsetting things happen. She is not violent and does not abuse the child but it’s very rough for a little bit. But then the foster parents tell Sheila that her fears, although understandable, were excessive – they were not going to abandon this child the way his natural parents had. This crisis is upsetting but its resolution helps Sheila to face some of her fears. The problem is this is a tough thing to ask of a child in high school. That’s why asking her to volunteer was probably not the greatest of ideas. It makes sense b/c they met in a “special” class and that way they could spend time together but it seems from the book that it provided a lot of emotional strain as well.

  Another crisis happened when Sheila took off to find her bio-mother. She had not yet dealt with the issues of not having a mother and was distraught about that. She started frantically looking for a mother and responding to a woman who seemed mentally unbalanced but claimed she was Sheila’s mother. Torey was really scared about this. It turned out OK in that Sheila was not physically harmed, but the woman was not her mother, of course. Sheila had to start learning how to live without her mother, that she would never have one.

  One of the bright spots in this book is despite time in lockdown and etc (for other people’s mistakes, when Sheila asked questions she was viewed as trouble and put in security related to foster care – Torey was appalled but Sheila said, welcome to my world) Sheila was still bright and still had her sense of curiosity. She discovered Shakespeare and found that once she got past the initial issue with the old-fashioned language and English slang that she really loved his work. That he had exceptional insight into human nature. Torey supports this interest. Sheila does not become pretentious or anything – she is much too much a realist for that. However she seems to get a lot of consolation from reading the plays and other works and thinking about life.

  One thing that Shakespeare shows is that to be honest, life has been full of both comedy and tragedy since humans started out existence. It is either said or implied that Sheila feels better after being exposed to this work. It is one thing to know this as a truism and it’s another thing to read plays and see the descriptions and feel the feelings, and know that you are not alone.

  b/c being and/or feeling alone is at the heart of this. It’s at the heart of neglect in general. Torey hopes that with Sheila’s intelligence, she will go to a great university and do something great. Sheila goes to McDonald’s to work instead. This is not meant to be defiant. Sheila is very realistically concerned with supporting herself. No one was there to support her financially and so she had to do it or be resigned to the bitter poverty she grew up in. So she did. Later on would be the time to use her unusual intellectual abilities. That is easier with the Net anyway.

  Sheila and Torey have stayed in touch although Torey moved to Wales quite a while ago and Sheila is presumably in the US. I think it’s to both of their credit that they stopped seeing each other through the lens of the fairy tale and learned to see each other as real people.

  But in a situation like Sheila’s, she needs to be prepared to face the possibility that once people are gone they will not return, and any hope they would is false hope. Sheila has memory disturbances that at first disturb Torey – why wouldn’t she remember the support? But in cases like this, there is so much bad that it overwhelms the good.

  However in the end they built a realistic relationship that lasted. And Sheila hated school. I always hated school and for the same reason. There is little tolerance for students who ask questions, especially if the questions are considered odd or unusual. Sheila continued to ask questions b/c she had a hard time suppressing them. I learned not to ask b/c I went to Catholic school but in my mind I wasn’t convinced of very much. I can relate to that frustration.

  They develop a good but less emotionally intense relationship than they used to have. Sheila is a survivor and you get the sense that even if Torey had not come back into her life, she would have made it anyway. Still needing help but she would make it.
  Rating: 5 / 5
• By Angelia M. Padia on Sep 5, 2010

  this book is in great condition the price was good it was delivered quickly i would order from here again
  Rating: 5 / 5

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