Crossing the Water

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Summary: Make a difference
Review: A high school English teacher, I am eager to read books that will help me understand my own students better. Dan Robb's memoir joins RAISING CAIN and REVIVING OPHELIA on my shelf of essential reads for teachers. It is poignant and authentic. Robb's passion for his work and his compassion for his students inspire me. I have students like those he describes; mine just have yet to run afoul of the law. I recommend this book to all teachers and to all parents of boys.

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Summary: Crossing the Water: Eighteen Months on an Island Working...
Review: As he writes about his 18 months on a tiny island in Buzzards's Bay, MA, working with troubled youth, Daniel Robb tells a story that is full of suspense, pathos, and humor. His characters come to life in such a way that the reader finds herself rooting for them, wanting them to succeed against tough odds. The author also draws insightful parallels between his own life as the child of a broken home and that of his students. Despite the specificity of time and place, the themes are universal--love, forgiveness, anger, despair, hope, and dealing with relationships. I'm the richer for having read this book, and I highly recommend it.

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Summary: Couldn't get into it
Review: As my title states, I just couldn't get into this book, even though I work with kids. I didn't finish it. I thought it was sad that the school's success rate with the kids wasn't much better than the prison system's success rate. It seemed that the school administration was proud of the fact that they didn't have any professional counselling for the kids, and I'm not so sure that's something to be proud of.

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Summary: Crossing the Water
Review: Crossing the Water is an incredible literary journey. I found the raw language, raw emotion, raw fear, and raw hope to be inspiring and descriptive beyond my imagination. Daniel Robb authored a memoir that left me filled me with hope knowing there is a program with teachers and staff who dedicate their time and efforts to helping boys get back on track. I admire them all for their patience and persistence, but most of all, I admire the boys for their courage to step out of their past and look into the future.

It's a great read and I know you'll feel what I mean!

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't get into it
Review: Dan Robb's memoir criss-crosses the worlds of the Pennikese bad boys--his students; of his own memories of a sometimes tempest-tossed adolescence; of his adult role of teacher in uncharted territory; and of an island--sere and beautiful, immutably changing with the seasons and with the boys who come and go--a place isolated yet self-contained, severe and yet secure, once "home" to lepers, now a prison-home for boys perched on the brink of social leprosy.
Robb's beautifully descriptive book carries the reader back and forth among these intersecting worlds while limning sharp yet fleshy portraits of the boys, each of whose stories grabs and engrosses. This is a book--yes, for teachers who know, or are learning, that the best kind of pedagogy is through memory, storytelling and the imaging of new worlds; for those concerned about how to treat and heal our outcast and abandoned children; and for those who, along with their interest in a critical and wrenching problem, also take pleasure in the work of a gifted teacher/writer/artist.

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Summary: Surprising page turner
Review: I say surprising because 18 months on a cold, ocean-swept island working with troubled boys might be a snore to read about, but this book isn't. I wanted to find out what happened from day to day to the boys and the staff at the school. The island is really another character in the book, too. Definitely worth a read, even if the subject matter seems not your kind of thing. It's a good story.

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Summary: Heartwrenching and hopeful
Review: In this wonderful book, Dan Robb has managed to write about his experience teaching troubled boys with soul and without sentimentality. The rawness of his experience teaching on an isolated island off of Cape Cod, and the soul searching it prompted, makes for compelling reading no matter how much time you spend thinking about or working with kids. As the mother of a small boy, I also felt that reading this book was a way of learning about how to be a good parent to my child. I recommend this book with all my heart, and hope that it touches you as deeply as it did me.

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Summary: BACK TO BASICS IN THE AGE OF E-MAIL
Review: It's a provocative book that has jump-started several great conversation with friends. I learned from Dan Robb's book, CROSSING THE WATER, the cost of trying to connect with another human being. And the risks involved. I admired the simple honesty of his well-told story. Here is a man trying to make a difference in the world--one face-to-face interaction at a time. An admirable task in the age of e-mail. In teaching the boys of Penikese the basic rule in life that every action has a consequence he has reminded me of the importance of compassion. Robb writes intelligently, with a common sense almost spiritual bent I found compelling. I think he offers something to strive for, not just to troubled boys. Among other topics CROSSING THE WATER is a commentary of adolescent education, the art of teaching, street life, island life, parenthood, race realtions, and what it takes to be a human being these days. Robb's got a lot to say and I want to hear more from this new writer and true teacher.

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Summary: Great Reading!
Review: This is an excellent book and totally pertinent to modern times, and experiences of growing up, no matter how old you think you are!

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Summary: A "keeper"
Review: Years ago, before the School but long after the lepers, I used to sail to Penikese Island. I have roamed its rocky spine, lain in its chirring tall grasses, and combed its shores for things cast away. With rare clarity, Daniel Robb has brought me back there and introduced me to its latest inhabitants, the young men who, themselves cast away, are given a last chance at piecing together a viable future. Artfully tied in with the events that shaped the author's youth (There, but for the grace of God, goeth I), this book is a vivid account of what its like to live in a pressure-cooker of pent-up violence and betrayed trust. Gutsy and sensitive, it has earned a top place on my "great books" list.