Alone in the World: Orphans and Orphanages in America
Starred Review. Grade 5-8–Orphans and orphanages, although topics of interest in children's fiction, have been neglected in nonfiction except for accounts of the orphan trains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This gap has now been filled by Reef's thoroughly researched history of children's homes in the U.S. beginning in 1729, when a place for girls was founded in New Orleans. The author relates how many orphaned or impoverished children were consigned to almshouses, where they often lived in filthy, crowded conditions with criminals and the mentally ill. In the 1820s and 1830s, the view that children should be given "asylum" from the horrors of the poorhouses became widely accepted. Reef also discuses the homes opened for orphaned soldiers' and sailors' children throughout the country following the Civil War and a 1909 White House conference that resulted in a national policy urging that children be kept in their own homes by providing financial aid to their widowed or deserted mothers. She ends with a discussion of the challenges the U.S. faces today in caring for growing numbers of homeless, abused, or neglected children. Illustrated with archival photographs and reproductions, this book contains numerous endnotes and an extensive selected bibliography. An afterword detailing the later lives of some of the children included makes a satisfying conclusion to this fascinating account. An important historical resource for public and school libraries.–Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.