Bruce Ritter (1927–1999)

I'm sure some people would be upset that I am giving this book such a low rating, but I'd like to be clear that my rating is for the book itself, not the charity work that the author does (or did?). Helping homeless kids, or any other act of charity/kindness, is automatically 5 stars.

However, this is Goodreads, a site about books, so I am reviewing this book, and the quality of the writing/storytelling. After reading the back of this book and what it was supposed to be about. I had higher show more expectations for it and frankly, I was quite disappointed with the choppiness of the chapters and storytelling. It's not till I got to the back of the book and read the after-material that I saw that this was actually supposed to be a collection of the newsletter that the author had written for Convent House.

Which just... no. This book would have worked better if Bruce had actually expanded on the bits that he put in the newsletter about the kids. I'd have liked to learn more about the kids themselves, and where they ended up, and so on and so forth - an actual collection of biographies rather than a bunch of newsletters thrown together. Because the book was so slim and scant, it failed to have the emotional effect on me that I had been expecting.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like anything is sugar-coated here, but again, it's pretty... scant. show less

Kind of outdated. Kind of judgmental. But a nice look at how things got started, the spirit of Covenant House, and the dangers for kids on the street.

Even as a gullible child, I thought there was something weird about this book.

I have avoided reading this book believing it would make me cry but it didn't it made me sad, it made me mad, but it did not make me cry. I'll be looking in to Covenant House and probably make a donation.