Lost Futures : Our Forgotten Children

Rating:
Summary: a book of questions
Review: Every child in these pictures asks questions. Why don't I have a home? Why do I live in a car? In this camp? Why is my mother crying? Why is everything broken? Why is the refrigerator empty? Why do I need help breathing? Why is the air so bad? Why did I die before I could grow up? Why am I in a coffin? Why are there so many coffins? Why must I be a prostitute? Who are these people who come to me? Who keeps the money? Who eats the vegetables I pick? Why do the chemicals make me sick? Who makes the money? Why is the only place I have to live in this sewer? Why do they rape me? Why do people think I'm bad because I sniff glue? Why do I have to work instead of going to school? Why did the soldiers try to kill me? Will my mother still love me even though I lost a hand? An eye? Why do I feel so good when I have this gun? Who paid for the gun? Who will I kill? Why ....?

Stan Grossfeld has mercy on us. The last two pages offer us ways to help these kids.

Read it. Meditate on it. Weep. Act.

Rating:
Summary: a book of questions
Review: Every child in these pictures asks questions. Why don't I have a home? Why do I live in a car? In this camp? Why is my mother crying? Why is everything broken? Why is the refrigerator empty? Why do I need help breathing? Why is the air so bad? Why did I die before I could grow up? Why am I in a coffin? Why are there so many coffins? Why must I be a prostitute? Who are these people who come to me? Who keeps the money? Who eats the vegetables I pick? Why do the chemicals make me sick? Who makes the money? Why is the only place I have to live in this sewer? Why do they rape me? Why do people think I'm bad because I sniff glue? Why do I have to work instead of going to school? Why did the soldiers try to kill me? Will my mother still love me even though I lost a hand? An eye? Why do I feel so good when I have this gun? Who paid for the gun? Who will I kill? Why ....?

Stan Grossfeld has mercy on us. The last two pages offer us ways to help these kids.

Read it. Meditate on it. Weep. Act.

Rating:
Summary: The most compelling book of photographs I've seen. Ever.
Review: Grossfeld is a master. Compassionate photographs of childrenin horrific situations. You haven't seen these images before. Thereare stories in their eyes. Check out the section in the back on how to change the world for them.

Rating:
Summary: Heartwrenching -- Superb
Review: I have owned this book for a few years and turn to it again and again. It is filled with photos in black and white of children from various parts of the world who are on their last legs. For me the most touching image is opposite a foreward from Mother Teresa. It is a picture of an Ethiopian mother and a beautiful child waiting for food in a refugee camp. The child is skin and bones. The love between the mother and child goes straight to the heart. The caption explains that the child died later that day. In her foreward, Mother Teresa says that the "children in these pictures speak to us." Indeed they do.

Rating:
Summary: Heartwrenching -- Superb
Review: I have owned this book for a few years and turn to it again and again. It is filled with photos in black and white of children from various parts of the world who are on their last legs. For me the most touching image is opposite a foreward from Mother Teresa. It is a picture of an Ethiopian mother and a beautiful child waiting for food in a refugee camp. The child is skin and bones. The love between the mother and child goes straight to the heart. The caption explains that the child died later that day. In her foreward, Mother Teresa says that the "children in these pictures speak to us." Indeed they do.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening and demanding of social action.
Review: I must first begin with admitting that I have not read this book, yet I still believe that my thoughts are applicable. Over the summer of 1998 I was introduced to Mr. Grossfelds work in the form of a lecture/slide show. He revieled much of the content of the book and explained his views on the subjects at hand. After the show by instict all I could do was sit alone and question my life, my social awareness and action, and appreciate what a wonderful life I was born into.

The photographs of this book document the aspects of our world of which we are less proud. During times where we are advancing phenominally, these problems can not be ignored. The making of this book is one important step to recognizing and addressing these issues. I urge anyone with any hint of social awareness, any hint of compassion, to purchase this book. The profits contribute to worthy fondations which give direct aid and make direct changes in the lives of those who are less fortunate.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening and demanding of social action.
Review: I must first begin with admitting that I have not read this book, yet I still believe that my thoughts are applicable. Over the summer of 1998 I was introduced to Mr. Grossfelds work in the form of a lecture/slide show. He revieled much of the content of the book and explained his views on the subjects at hand. After the show by instict all I could do was sit alone and question my life, my social awareness and action, and appreciate what a wonderful life I was born into.

The photographs of this book document the aspects of our world of which we are less proud. During times where we are advancing phenominally, these problems can not be ignored. The making of this book is one important step to recognizing and addressing these issues. I urge anyone with any hint of social awareness, any hint of compassion, to purchase this book. The profits contribute to worthy fondations which give direct aid and make direct changes in the lives of those who are less fortunate.

Rating:
Summary: The most touching photographs I have ever seen.
Review: If you read this book, it will change you forever. This isStan's best book to date.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling call for action in photos/words to help kids
Review: The tear falling from the eye of a starving Haitian infant on the cover of "LOST FUTURES: OUR FORGOTTEN CHILDREN," by photographer and writer Stan Grossfeld isn't the only one that will fall in this important, powerful and provocative new book.

Most readers will also leave their tears somewhere in this book. But it should also prompt people to action.

Grossfeld, in dramatic photographs and text, is unrelenting in his determination to make people confront themselves and, in page after page, ask how the most innocent and helpless among us could be at best so neglected, and at worst, so horribly abused and maltreated.

"Can it be our wealth means so much to us that we have lost sight of those who have nothing?" Muhammad Ali asks in his foreword.

"The children in these pictures speak to us. They urge us to pray," says a message from Mother Teresa.

For much of this decade Grossfeld, a photographer for The Boston Globe, traveled the United States and the world to document the treatment of children -- particularly the hopeless, lost and abandoned.

Adults are few and far between in the book. Some of the few shown are the heros, such as Richard Serino, head of Boston's Emergency Medical Services. Sometimes they are the mothers and fathers, struggling with the little they have -- often no more than a hug and empathetic tears -- to help their children.

There are other adults:

-- The soldiers in Northern Ireland seemingly in the midst of combat while a child plays nearby.

-- The man smoking a cigarette as he gropes a 15-year-old prostitute in Bangkok -- a young girl who says she needs money for a new roof for her family home.

-- The prisoners at Rikers Island in New York City who bury infants on Hart Island. The wood boxes -- piled seven deep, more than 1,000 a year -- contain the bodies of babies who were stillborn, or lived just a few days or hours, victims mostly of AIDS or drug addiction passed on from their mothers.

Far too many children in the world, Grossfeld's book reveals, learn at too early an age that life is difficult. Mineirinho, a street child in Rio, knows it -- and finds his escape by inhaling glue. Like Veronica, an abandoned 16-year-old who lives in a sewer and only sees the police when they come to rape her, Mineirinho says the glue is recreation and escape. "If we want rain, we get rain. if we want a rainbow, we get a rainbow."

"LOST FUTURES" isn't just a compilation of good work by a talented photographer and writer.

It is a good work in progress. The last section, HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, lists resources and agencies working to end many of the conditions Grossfeld exposes. Also, all of Grossfeld's royalties are being donated to the U.S. Committee for UNICEF, (http://www.unicefusa.org) the United Nations Childrens Fund.

See the world, the children of the world, through Grossfeld's eyes. Readers will leave, at least, a tear.

In his preface, Grossfeld implores:

"Take a tour of the planet with me, and think about what you could do to make a difference. One thing I learned is this: Everyone can do something. The first step is home. ...

"Take a tour of the planet with me and listen to these children. ...

"Take a tour of the planet, and see what we do to children in the name of God. ...

"Take a tour of the planet, and instead of thinking, 'There's nothing I can do,' ask, 'What can I do to change this.' ...

"Take a tour of the planet, and know the boundless horrors to which innocent children are subjected. ...

"Take a tour of the planet but instead of entering the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, stop and see the children of migrant workers living nearby. ...

"Take a tour of the planet, and see how the spotlight of world attention shines brightly and passes into the shadow. ..."