A Safe Place for Joey

By: Mary MacCracken

Narrated by: Caitlin Thorburn

From bestselling author and teacher Mary Maccracken comes the engaging and inspiring story of five troubled children who she fought to bring back from the brink

Joey is the class clown, but alone proves to be an intensely dark seven-year old who still can’t read.
Eric is a kindergartener, left withdrawn and speechless by the horrors he’s witnessed at home.
Alice appears the model fifth year child, but secretly scores zero on every maths test.
Charlie, an eight-year old, struggles to understand his place in the world, leaving him confused and alone.
Ben comes from a comfortable life at home, but has been called stupid so many times he now believes it.

These are some of the learning-disabled children who were in deep trouble until Mary MacCracken, an extraordinary therapist and teacher, works her magic with them and transforms their lives. Her heart-warming book is a testament to her talent, compassion and love.

Perfect Inspiration for Special Education Teachers

The narrator of a book determines if I continue listening. The author's story determines if it will personally touch me.
As a new Special Education Teacher working as a Learning Specialist, I had no idea how much this story would speak to me. Mary McCracken set the stage for me to know how to talk to parents and how to reach students in a personally meaningful way. I will be listening to this again at the beginning of each school year, as well as any time I feel discouraged. Thank you Mary and Caitlin for helping me touch my student's' lives!

Excellent!

Truly gave me more insight into the mind of my 7 year old foster daughter, whom we are adopting. Her learning disabilities as well as her traumatic start to life can sometimes cause her to have behaviors that are truly difficult. Mary's stories truly inspire me to try to be more patient, understanding, and to try to make my home and my heart a "safe place for Rosi".

Enjoyed the book

I enjoyed hearing about the different children, their various learning difficulties, and the methods Mary employed to help them overcome these difficulties. My only negative point on the recording of this audiobook is that it seemed the narrator struggled herself pronouncing certain words, or often used the wrong word. At one point she used casual instead of causal. I wonder if this was done on purpose to illustrate a point, or just poor editing on the producer's part. It was a good listen anyhow.

Dated and listless narration

In Mary MacCracken’s last book, she’s now an evaluator and tutor for learning disabled children. She shares stories of five of her clients to illustrate the different types of issues impact students’ abilities to learn. She uses a strong mental health component to her work as most of the children believe they are “stupid” or “dumb”. Many have anxiety around their school work.

MacCracken goes into detail about the psychological and intelligence testing and since I had already studied and administered many of the test, I found that part tedious. A SAFE PLACE FOR JOEY focuses more on the academic portion of the children’s stories, which is an issue for a book written in the 1990s, because so much of what we know about the brain and learning has progressed. We now use the term learning differences, rather than disabilities because often these kids are just as bright but need to learn differently that the majority of their peers. Their strengths and weaknesses are atypical so they may need to learn math an alternative way for numbers to make sense.

Because neuroscience has progressed A SAFE PLACE FOR JOEY felt more obsolete than MacCracken’s previous books. I enjoyed the stories of the children most as well as MacCracken’s ability to teach to the strengths of her clients. I’ve always said the hardest part of working with kids is their parents, and she illustrates why in the case studies.