Rating: 
Summary: From a neonatal nurse
Review: I bought this book because I am very interested in both neonatology and the 1933 Chicago World Fair. I must say Ms Brown did her research well and her portrayal of the physicians and nurses was very accuarate. We do have a passion for little people. My complaint is the way the book evolves in the the last few pages. Then the book just stops. I turned the page and there were the acknowledgements. Did Ms Brown's computer breakdown or something? The book is now circulating around the NICU and most everybody feels the same way. People say "Don't tell me the ending" Those of us who have read it say "what ending?"
Rating: 
Summary: I just couldn't get into it!
Review: I love books about neonatology, so I thought that I would really like this book. Boy was I wrong. I only got to page 30, and ended up returning the brand-new book. Perhaps I didn't get far enough into the story, but I didn't like the writing at all, so I decided to stop. Just to let you know, I am a very avid reader, and enjoy almost every book I read. This just wasn't a keeper. My advice: before you buy this book, read all of the reviews, or borrow it from the library.
Rating: 
Summary: Dreamy quality of novel also a reader's dream
Review: I love it when I discover an author so gifted and talented that reading his or her current book makes me salivate at the thought of going back to savor previous works! Such is the case with Carrie Brown's "The Hatbox Baby" - the title of which alone was enough to intrigue me. And I must say that the book lives up to - and, indeed, beyond - its innovative title.The novel tells the story of a baby which is brought to Dr. Leo Hoffman's premature baby exhibit at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. The baby's frantic father has brought him to Dr. Hoffman - considered to be a world-renown specialist in what are today called "premies" - on the advice of the midwife who helped deliver the baby. "If anyone can help your baby, HE can," she tells the baby's father. As the father first hunts frantically for the exhibit and then, once he's found it, loiters hesitantly outside the doctor's tent, Ms. Brown demonstrates her ability to build and maintain suspense while evoking the dream-like unreality of the fair atmosphere, with its carnival trappings, misshapen participants and crowds eager for titillation and entertainment. Careful and thorough characterizations leave the reader with clear pictures of Dr. Hoffman, Caroline the Fan Dancer (whose risque exhibition/dance show is located next door to the baby exhibit) and St. Louis, the pseudo-dwarf who is both friend and adopted family to Caroline, among others. Ms. Brown knows how to elicit the reader's sympathy for and understanding of the people that populate this novel and this connection is established through her fine writing and ability to place the reader within the minds and worlds of her characters. And, over all, looms the World's Fair - entertaining, nightmarish, ridiculous, pathetic, but always present and always clearly delineated. This backdrop, with its focus on the future and its marvels to come, still never manages to escape the fact that some things - both good and bad - are eternal and ageless. Of course, there is The Hatbox Baby itself and the questions it and its fellow exhibits raise, including asking the reader to consider just what is "normal" anyway. This novel is a brilliant and unforgettable work, and I recommend having time at your disposal once you begin reading it because you will not want to put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: A great world to live in for a few days
Review: I really fell in love with this book. It was a cross between Geek Love and The Ciderhouse Rules (two of my favorite books). It was odd and sad and beautiful at the same time. I just liked the idea of living amoung the people at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1933 when things that we take for granted now were just being discovered. The author did a great job of putting you right on those streets in that era with characters you start to really to care about.
Some people complained about the ending and I can kind of see their point. There is not a lot of resolution but if you read it just to go on a trip into the strange and awesome world of carnivals and the people who inhabit them you will love the ride.
Rating:
Summary: A great world to live in for a few days
Review: I really fell in love with this book. It was a cross between Geek Love and The Ciderhouse Rules (two of my favorite books). It was odd and sad and beautiful at the same time. I just liked the idea of living amoung the people at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1933 when things that we take for granted now were just being discovered. The author did a great job of putting you right on those streets in that era with characters you start to really to care about.
Some people complained about the ending and I can kind of see their point. There is not a lot of resolution but if you read it just to go on a trip into the strange and awesome world of carnivals and the people who inhabit them you will love the ride.
Rating:
Summary: (2.5) A fascinating premise
Review: I was caught from the first by the title. How could the story not live up to the concept? Unfortunately, Ms. Brown fails to imbue her novel with the necessary elements for this reader. Toward the middle of the book, Ms. Brown seems to hit her stride and her momentum pulls the reader along until the ending, in which the characters are still barely fleshed and disappointing. There is such an ambiguous resolution that I was left with more questions than answers. In THE HATBOX BABY, a premature baby is hand-carried to the 1933 World's Fair, where a doctor is attending and exibiting premature babies in incubators of his design. The doctor and two of his neighboring performers at the World's Fair comprise the cast of characters. Having delived the "Hatbox baby", the young father meets a violent death after viewing the neighboring exhibit, leaving the baby's fate in question. I read Bobbie Mason's FEATHER CROWNS, which told the painful story of five premature infants born to an unsuspecting and poverty-stricken couple around the same time historically. In FEATHER CROWNS, Mason offers a fascinating picture of the consequences for the young parents and their tiny infants. I was hoping THE HATBOX BABY would offer similar satisfaction. My expectations were not met by Brown's short novel, but her writing skills lead me to believe that her book could have been as rich and full with more character and plot development.
Rating:
Summary: A Slow Beginning, But Worth the Wait
Review: If you can tolerate the slow beginning, this book has an intriguing premise. At the 1933 World's Fair, a young father races through the crowds, with a premature baby in a hatbox, to Dr. Leo Hoffman. Hoffman raises money for his premature baby hospital and research by exhibiting the tiny babies in glass incubators to the public at fairs. By nightfall, the young man is dead outside a tavern on the fair grounds, the baby is safely ensconced in an incubator with filtered oxygen, and we are introduced to the characters next door to the hospital - Caro, the stripper/dancer and her dwarf-like cousin, St. Louis, who acts as a body guard. The characters are interesting and the story moves along after the slow start until the last dozen pages when the story takes an odd and inexplicable turn that leaves you feeling like something important flashed by without you noticing it. But Brown's writing shows great promise and her next book should be an interesting one as well.
Rating:
Summary: Slow start, ambiguous ending -- and a great middle
Review: Most popular books are primarily start and finish; the philosophy of many authors seems to be to hook the reader on the first two pages and promise them a WOW! ending, but forget the rest.
This book really lives in the middle. I love the descriptions of the preemies, the people who care for them, and the people who are affected by them.
I really loved some characters (we get to meet lots of people in this book) and really loathed a few (particularly That Woman, who gets her spectacular comeuppance from the elephants -- you'll know exactly who and why when you get to that page!).
Both the science and the politics of the time are interesting. The reason that the doctor "exhibits" the premature babies (most of whom have been abandoned permanently by their parents) is because there is no money to care for them in hospitals; the only way to pay for the nurses, equipment, and supplies is to charge visitors for tours of the sparkling clean, perfectly ordered, beautifully tranquil facilities.
This is not exactly a historical work (although based on real history). It is not exactly a love story, a figuring-out-life story, a mystery story, or an any-other-neat-category story. It has at least some elements of all of these things, but is difficult to pigeonhole accurately.
Be prepared for a slow start -- actually, for TWO slow starts, as the story begins in two separate places, and it takes a while for the halves to meet -- and for a choose-your-own ending, since the author doesn't resolve everything neatly at the end of the book.
Rating:
Summary: The Hatbox Baby is a find!
Review: On a sweltering summer morning in 1933, a baby is delivered in a hatbox to Infantorium at the World's Fair & a mystery of love lost & found begins among the freaks & marvels of the Century of Progress Exposition. Somewhere in that hot midwestern city, a young woman is giving birth, with the help of a neighboring midwife, to an infant unlikely to survive. The father, in desperation snatches up the living babe & rushes off to the World's Fair because he'd read about a doctor who could save premature babies. It is the life of this tiny baby, born too early, that brings strangers together in a bond of desperate hope, frantic escapes & heartwarming redemption in a far-away time our grandparents might remember well. A beautifully researched & written adventure of a special time & a particularly strange place. A fascinating read!
Rating:
Summary: The Hatbox Baby is a find!
Review: On a sweltering summer morning in 1933, a baby is delivered in a hatbox to Infantorium at the World's Fair & a mystery of love lost & found begins among the freaks & marvels of the Century of Progress Exposition. Somewhere in that hot midwestern city, a young woman is giving birth, with the help of a neighboring midwife, to an infant unlikely to survive. The father, in desperation snatches up the living babe & rushes off to the World's Fair because he'd read about a doctor who could save premature babies. It is the life of this tiny baby, born too early, that brings strangers together in a bond of desperate hope, frantic escapes & heartwarming redemption in a far-away time our grandparents might remember well. A beautifully researched & written adventure of a special time & a particularly strange place. A fascinating read!
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