Tiger's Child
The Story of a Gifted, Troubled Child and the Teacher Whoe Refused to Give up on Her
by Torey Hayden
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Special education teacher Torey Hayden's first book, One Child, was an international bestseller, thrilling readers on every continent. Their hearts were captured by Sheila, a silent, troubled girl who had been abandoned on a highway by her mother and abused by her alcoholic father, and who refused to speak. As Hayden writes in the prologue to this book, "This little girl had a profound effect on me. Her courage, her resilience, and her inadvertent ability to express that great, gaping need to be loved that we all feel—in short, her humanness—brought me into contact with my own."
Since then, Hayden has gone on to write books about many of her students, but her fans continue to ask her, "What happened to Sheila?" The Tiger's Child is her response. Here Hayden tells how Sheila, now a young woman, finally came to terms with her nightmare childhood.
When Hayden was working on One Child, she showed the manuscript to Sheila, then a teenager, and was astonished to find that Sheila remembered almost nothing of her troubled younger years. She had no recollection of her many clashes with her teacher as Hayden tried to break through her emotional pain. And although Hayden had managed to get Sheila to communicate and become an active and lively child, Sheila's home life was still very troubled. Her father had been sent to prison when she was eight and Sheila had run away from a series of foster homes until finally she was placed in a children's home.
But as Hayden continued to renew her relationship with the teenage Sheila, the memories slowly came back, bringing with them feelings of abandonment and hostility. Overwhelmed by the intensity of her awakening emotions, Sheila was driven to suicidal despair. The Tiger's Child is the touching, inspiring story of how a maturing Sheila came to perceive her mother not as a monster who willfully cast off her eldest child, but as a weak, forlorn, ordinary human being. Able to appreciate her own strength and resilience, Sheila at last is free to overcome the haunting legacy of child abuse.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 6, 1995 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781439107188
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781439107188
- File size: 2083 KB
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Lexile® Measure: 850
- Text Difficulty: 4-5
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Reviews
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February 27, 1995
Abandoned by her mother on a highway at age four, abused by her drug-addict father between his prison stints, autistic, electively mute Sheila Renstad at age six broke through her silent rage to communicate, aided by her five-month relationship with special-education teacher Hayden. That experience, recorded in Hayden's One Child, which became a TV movie, is updated in this deeply moving sequel. It picks up with Sheila as a sullen 13-year-old bouncing between juvenile facilities and her father's ``care.'' As Hayden renews her ties to Sheila--first at a clinic, then through informal contacts--the girl's outbursts and foul-mouthed sexual preoccupations betray a desperate craving for a sense of belonging. An inspirational testament to the healing power of love, this authentic tearjerker resonates with drama. There is no storybook ending: Sheila, with an IQ over 180, forgoes college to work for McDonald's; an epilogue finds her 10 years later as a branch manager at McDonald's and an articulate, stable woman. Paperback rights to Avon; Literary Guild alternate; Readers Digest Condensed Book selection. -
November 15, 1994
Remember Sheila, the autistic girl in Hayden's best-selling One Child (LJ 5/15/80)? Here Hayden relates Sheila's struggles as an adult to come to terms with her abusive past. -
January 1, 1995
This is Hayden's sequel to her best-selling One Child (1981), the story of an abandoned autistic child. Here, Hayden describes in detail what happened to Sheila from the age of six to 16, a decade filled with tension, a search for understanding, and profound moments of love. During the course of this fast-paced narrative, Hayden's career develops from classroom teacher to practicing psychologist in a private clinic. Throughout this time, she keeps track of Sheila, torn between her professional knowledge of what constitutes appropriate treatment for the young woman and her instinct to be the good mother. This book is not only interesting as a biography of a seriously disturbed child but as a portrayal of a working psychologist. Anyone involved with children will find it enlightening.-Nancy E. Zuwiyya, Binghamton City Sch. Dist., N.Y.
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