The Sea Is So Wide and My Boat Is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation (Hardcover)

by Marian Wright Edelman (Author)
Key Phrases: please save our children, stand with others for children, prison pipeline, United States, Poor People's Campaign, Our Leaders (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In a series of open letters to parents, educators, young people, Dr. King—with whom she collaborated on the 1968 Poor People's Campaign—and her own grandchildren—Edelman (The Measure of Our Success), founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, addresses the millions of children silently suffering from abuse, abandonment and poverty. The author passionately inveighs against parental and community neglect (Adults are what's wrong with our children, she writes); however, her rhetoric, marked by repetitive calls for change and use of jargon like the Cradle to Prison Pipeline, is an ineffective vehicle for her good intentions, and the text—long on grim statistics—occasionally reads uncomfortably like a grant proposal. Her book comes to life when the author reminisces about her childhood and rousingly condemns government's support of the nation's richest citizens. Readers seriously concerned about the plight of American children may find many concrete suggestions for action, but the slew of numbers and lack of personal stories in the opening sections will certainly dissuade many others. (Sept.)
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From Booklist
To the frequently asked question—What’s wrong with today’s children?—Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, responds with a resounding “Adults are what’s wrong with our children.” She follows up her best-seller, The Measure of Our Success (1992), with another impassioned plea for adults to do something about the crushing hardships faced by too many American children. In each chapter, Edelman addresses letters to parents, teachers, neighbors, community leaders, and others, outlining the issues of poverty, illiteracy, neglect, and abuse that children face and how adults can ameliorate the suffering of children. In the chapter aimed specifically at the kind of poverty that feeds children directly into prison, the “Cradle to Prison Pipeline,” Edelman offers a nine-step program, including increasing tax relief for poor families, broadening early childhood education programs, and reforming the juvenile justice system. Following the format of her previous book, she addresses an encouraging, loving, and inspirational letter to her grandchildren and the generations of children born along with them and to come after. Edelman intersperses devastating statistics (black women in the U.S. are more likely to die from complications of pregnancy or childbirth than mothers in Turkmenistan) with passionate arguments—and sound policy ideas—for eliminating poverty and achieving racial and social justice. An inspirational and practical perspective on ameliorating childhood poverty. --Vanessa Bush

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (September 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401323332
• ISBN-13: 978-1401323332
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #358,789 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tribute, December 2, 2008

By	Herman David Hodges - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Marian Wright Edelman has written an instructional manual on how to build a nation for all children. Like all instructional manuals it is not exciting or entertaining. And it is expensive for it's intended audience;ie 19 pages for Parents. But Ms. Edelman cares enough to challenge me to get this manual out to her intendeds. So I bought four copies.

As a tribute to a teacher friend that recently passed, I gave away each book asking each recipient to read and then pass the book onward. The voyage of Ms. Edelman's message has begun.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book...raising kids, March 19, 2009

By	Jeona L. Sanders "JSanders" (Hannibal,MO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have just started reading book which I so love. I rcvd in very timely manner.Thanks