The Best Book I Read for Class by Ann

The Best Book I Read for Class by Ann - July 2013 Scholarship Essay

     The best book I have read for school is titled Throwing Stones by Marc Parent. The book is about a man who graduated from a Wisconsin college and decides to take his degree as a Human Service worker to New York City. When he gets to New York he obtains a job in Child Protective Services and decides to write a book about what he experiences working in this profession in a city the size of New York.
     The reason the book is so good to me is not only because of the experiences he writes about but also because of the outlook he has concerning these experiences. Marc is candidly open about what is taking place when he makes his home visits along with his feelings about what he is dealing with in the homes of these sometimes lost souls.
     The book begins with the author writing about a five year old child who is left at home with his two year old brother while his mother goes out drug hunting. The five year old is terrified being left alone and worries his younger brother is going to alert the local drug dealers of their situation by his excessive crying. The older child decides the only way to prevent this is by killing his younger brother to stop him from crying. Marc writes about his experience of trying to talk this frightened child out of cutting his baby brothers throat. He describes what he himself is going through while trying to convince this baby that he is brave and that his brother is not going to keep crying for long. This is only one of the many horrendous adventures he encounters while he offers himself to the city of New York.
     Marc describes going to the hospital with a co-worker to try to help the police solve a case where two children have been beaten. One of the children is dead and the other is close to death. He tells a tale of two other frightened children, a mother, and her sister all trying to hide the reality of what transpired over the past few hours that caused the death of this child. Ultimately one of the children tells a tale of how he was left alone with his nephews while his mother and aunt go to work. He is only nine years old himself but he is left with the responsibility of these two very poorly behaved children and how after much antagonizing he snapped and beat one of them to death and almost did the same to the other. He talks about his feelings concerning these episodes and who he feels is truly to blame for this child’s death.
     There are other tragic stories that Mr. Parent writes about in this book. Most of them are just as tragic as the two I have described. The sad stories involving these children are not what I found entertaining. The way the author was able to involve his audience in what was transpiring with each child, the way he was able to allow us to see this aspect of life as something we need to acknowledge and be aware of, and the way he was able to open himself up to criticism by expressing his thoughts was what I thought made this a memorable book. I have read many entertaining books since I started school, but I think I can say without hesitation that none of them had the effect on me that this book did.