Brilliant

As always another fantastic one from Maggie Hartley
All great books can’t wait for the next one

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Great book

What a fantastic read I can not wait to read more books like this I wish my foster parents where more like maggie

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good book with great narrator

the narrator was really good the three short stories were interesting couldn't put the book down

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brilliant

absolutely enjoyed it you really got into the story from the beginning you couldn't put it down

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Maggie the spiritfarer

Like the computer game spiritfarer, Maggie is a guide, whilst she doesn't bring people through to death, she does take them over the bumps in life.

I didn't know that foster parents were on call. I didn't know they dealt with children whose parents were in hospital because of a sore back, or car accidents. However I did know they dealt with abandoned/neglected/difficult children.

I'm of two minds about Maggie. On the one hand the book is written in simple terms, she's not exactly creative with the vocabulary. She uses terms like X was genuinely. y must have been terrifying etc often. It is true that in spoken language we are limited to a tiny amount of the myriad of words we know. However, when writing we have carte blanche to be as bombastic and facetious as desired. On the other hand Maggie shows exceptional skill and intelligence in dealing with children through distraction and whilst she knows who did the fire, her fighting for the foster childs corner is the sort of action that turns kids round.

She's doing god's work

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fantastic

absolutely brilliant. A great insight into what life can be like for children in foster care

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I really enjoyed it

This was well written and easy to listen to. it opened my eyes up the challenges some children face and the great work done by foster carers and social workers in supporting children. I would be keen to listen to more

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Incredibly naive fosterer!!

Maggie the foster carer is very nice, kind and friendly, but can be quite dim when it comes to really obvious red flag clues!!

The first story is really sweet and moving. A small girl is badly neglected by her drug addict mother and her baby brother has come to grief. Maggie helps her find a happy ending.

The second one is about a troubled preteen with a history of disturbed behaviour who has been involved in a fire. But nice but far too naive Maggie seems to have no clue why her garden shed suddenly catches fire shortly after her adult daughter's lighter suddenly goes missing... 🙄 And she seems to have no idea it might be connected to the new disturbed girl's presence. The girl is plainly using fire as a self harm/comfort mechanism to self-soothe regarding her troubled attachment issues with her mother which are immediately obvious from the girl's feelings about her. It's so annoyingly, blundingly obvious to the reader (I too have over 20 years experience in childcare) what has happened and whose fault it is!! FFS. "I couldn't imagine how frightening it must be for her to be involved in another fire so soon after her children's home burned down". Come on luv!!! Don't be so thick!!!! 😬😬😬 Finally the penny drops. "I had no idea she was going to do this!" Maggie wails naively. (Well duh!!!)
"I'm sure it was just an isolated incident". (Seriously?) And she STILL thinks the girl had nothing to do with the mysterious fire at her children's home....

The 3rd story involves a teenager who can't take care of herself and constantly forgets everything, including what's just been said to her. From the description of the first few days, “special-needs" started screaming really loudly and obviously at me, especially after she got lost on the way to work, left the front door open and almost flooded the place after forgetting a bath was running. Her excuse, "my brain just gets really muddled sometimes and I don't remember" screamed "LEARNING DISABILITY!!" at me - but nice, dim Maggie still persisted in thinking she was just absent-minded!
By the time she'd impulsively posted her clothes allowance into a charity box, had a tantrum then immediately forgot about it, seemed unable to focus on even the TV for more than 10 minutes, and then left the gas running, I'd diagnosed ADD or FAS. But Maggie was still thinking she was a typical scatty teenager, if harder work than most. Come on dear!!! She's never been assessed, get it done now!!!
Finally, they found out that Rebecca's birth mother was an alcoholic, and it filtered through Maggie's brain that she had Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

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4 people found this helpful