Did I honestly think story time could
help my depressed daughter? I did.
Numerous studies have shown a correlation
between fiction and increased empathy.
My daughter, in the early years of grade school, dis-
trusted her teachers. She’d cry and hide under the desk,
so traumatized by the daily six-hour loss of my husband
and me that she couldn’t learn. She’d come home depressed
and full of self-loathing, biting giant holes in her T-shirts
and twisting her hair into knots. At last, when she entered
third grade, I shifted my work schedule to evenings and
weekends and began to homeschool her with a curric-
ulum designed around kids’ novels.
Initially, my neighbor slipped classics like Charlotte’s
Web and Black Beauty and Ramona the Pest into our
Little Free Library. When I told her about my home-
schooling plans, she added contemporary fiction she’d
come across in the classroom, stories that reflected themes
from my daughter’s early life experiences. We read Bud,
Not Buddy—Christopher Paul Curtis’s story of a
Depression-era boy moving in and out of foster homes
and searching for the musician he believes to be his father.
We read The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo’s
Newbery Medal–winning tale of a noble mouse aban-
doned by his family.
One day, we discovered Katherine Paterson’s novel
The Great Gilly Hopkins. My daughter and I stood in the
street, both of us raincoated against the misty March
morning, and studied the book cover. A tough, ponytailed
tween scowled up at us, one eyebrow arrogantly cocked.
“She looks angry,” my daughter said, putting the book
back on the shelf.
I pulled it out again and read the back cover. “It’s about
an 11-year-old who’s on her fourth foster home,” I said.
“She’s on a mission to find her birth mother.”
These days, when I read the jacket copy of a kids’ book
and feel simultaneously intrigued and uncomfortable, I
know it’s a novel I should read with my child. Back then,
I had no such instinct. Metaphorically, I’d throw books
at my daughter and hope one would stick.
I gazed up into the cedar. On one branch, a squirrel
nibbled a cone, and the detritus floated down and landed
in my daughter’s curls. “I think we should read this book,”
I said and carried it into the house.
PATERSON IS THE AUTHOR of Bridge to Terabithia, the
book responsible for making fifth and sixth graders every-
where weep. A year later, she published The Great Gilly
Hopkins. My daughter and I curled up on the couch with
our scruffy white terrier between us, and I began to read.
Gilly Hopkins is mean, angry, and manipulative. She’s
prejudiced against fat people, people with disabilities,
and African Americans. She calls her beautiful teacher
One Mother’s Day, my husband and I finally built our
LFL—as they’re fondly nicknamed—from plywood and
cast-off shingles and recycled casement windows. As soon
as we mounted our library on a post under our giant cedar,
our neighbor began stocking the lowest shelf with carefully
curated chapter books for kids. She worked as a grade
school teacher’s assistant and also knew about the foster
care system from which I’d adopted my daughter. I trusted
her taste in children’s literature, but I never suspected
she’d add a book that would change my daughter’s life.
A CHILD ADOPTED FROM the state, even if she’s just an
infant, has already experienced more loss than most kids.
In the womb, she might be exposed to drugs and alcohol
and suffer a dearth of prenatal care. If her birth mother
relinquishes her, she’s taken from the only body she’s
known for nine months and placed in a crib instead of
on a warm breast. She’s transferred to a foster parent,
where she may stay for a year or so while the state deter-
mines a permanent placement. Lacking relatives to adopt
her, and without interest from anyone else, she may find
herself bounced among foster homes until she ages out
of the system, usually at 18.
My daughter spent the first 19 months of her life in
foster homes, the second one run by a caregiver who
managed the lives of four toddlers at once. The kids had
regular pediatric and therapy appointments but didn’t
receive much eye contact and physical affection, which
are crucial to a child’s development of trust and security.
Researchers have found that many foster kids’ brains
contain a low volume of calming chemicals and higher
levels of stress chemicals.
The author and her
daughter browse their
Little Free Library.
COURTESY OF JONATHAN B. SM
ITH
74 REAL SIMPLE NOVEMBER 2019
