The Tiger's Child (30 page)

“Hayden pulls readers in … Chapters that fly with ease … Filled with descriptive, lively anecdotes,
The Tiger’s Child
illustrates the trials of teachers who work with emotionally disturbed children.”

Orlando Sentinel

“Hayden probably would have become a fine writer under any circumstances but it is our good fortune that she also decided to become a teacher of children with severe mental handicaps and emotional disorders.

When you read a Torey Hayden book, however, all such descriptions of children become academic nonsense. What we are guided to discover is that human beings rarely fit into conventional categories and diagnoses … Hayden has a gift for demonstrating the ways in which, despite their unique qualities, these human beings are ourselves. Here are universal fears, feelings of not being lovable enough, the universal inability to express the sources of pain.”

Washington Post Book World

“What kind of book will hook a teen on reading? … Any book by Torey Hayden.”

Florida Times-Union

“Hayden’s compassionate writing underscores the power of love.”

Topeka Capital-Journal

Also by Torey Hayden

She was a wild, violent six-year-old lost in a world of anger and torment – until a brilliant young teacher reached out
.

Six-year-old Sheila was abandoned by her mother on a highway when she was four. A survivor of horrific abuse, she never spoke and never cried. She 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 recognized trapped within Sheila’s silence.

‘Page after page proves again the power of love and the resiliency of life.’

Los Angeles Times

‘Torey Hayden deserves the kind of respect I can’t give many people. She isn’t just valuable, she’s incredible. The world needs more like Torey Hayden.’

Boston Globe

Excerpts from
The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, copyright 1943 and renewed 1971 by Harcourt Brace & Company, reprinted by permission of the publisher. Lines from “The Stolen Child” by W. B. Yeats are from
The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Editing
, edited by Richard J. Finneran (New York: Macmillan, 1983).

HarperElement

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First published in the US by Avon Books 1995

This edition published by HarperElement 2005

© Torey Hayden 1995

Torey Hayden asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007206971
Ebook Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN 9780007373956
Version 2

This book is based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names and some identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed. Some characters are not based on any one person but are composite characters.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

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