Rhodes-Courter, Ashley.
THREE LITTLE WORDS : A MEMOIR
New York : Atheneum, 2008
IL YA
ISBN 1416948066

(3 booktalks)

Ashley entered foster care at the young age of three.  Over the next nine years, she and her younger brother were placed in a variety of foster homes.  Sometimes together, sometimes apart.  Ashley endured 14 placements in nine years.  Some of the homes were good, and some were abusive.  Through it all, Ashley desperately wanted to believe her mother would return for her.  Her mother had promised that they would be back together again.  This is the author's true story of her life in the foster care system.  Her story of being caught in the system and her desire to live a normal life.

Booktalk #2

How much do you know about the foster care system?  Why do children often end up in foster care?  How do they get adopted?

Many of us take for granted the roof over our head and the people who take care of us, especially when we are young. Ashley Rhodes-Courter learned at the age of only three that the roof over her head and the woman taking care of her could not be counted on. At three, she is placed into foster care when her mother is arrested for the first time; it is not until she is twelve that Ashley is finally adopted by a caring family. The years in between are filled with a string of endless foster homes, some good and some very, very bad.  Ashley Rhodes-Courter tells the story of nine years in foster care in her memoir, Three Little Words.   (Rhode Island Teen Book Award nominee, 2010)

Booktalk #3

Taken from her irresponsible mother when she is 4 years old, Ashley spends the next nine years in Florida?s foster care system where she is shuffled between 13 state facilities and foster homes, some of which are horrifyingly abusive, before being adopted by a loving family.  (Florida Teen Reads nominee, 2010)