Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely could not put it down!
Review: I was up until 4 a.m. finishing Jennifer Lauck's gripping story of her childhood. The pages seemed to turn themselves as I followed the early loss of her tenderhearted mother, her panicky father's remarriage, and her experiences at the hands of a neurotic stepmother. What makes this debut all the more impressive is Lauck's clear and compelling prose style. Early in the book, the childlike tone seems potentially grating, but the reader is quickly drawn under Lauck's spell as that voice rapidly hardens and matures in the face of a tough life. More important, there's an astonishing lack of self-pity that makes the story all the more chilling. This is not one of those horrifying stories of child abuse and molestation that, no matter how shocking, we like to think of as happening on the fringes of society. Instead, this is a straightforward recounting of life's circumstantial horrors, namely what happens to children when the people who are supposed to take care of them die and there's no one to take the adults' places. It seems too easy (and unfair) to compare her to Mary Karr, but Lauck displays the same surefootedness and narrative tautness that kept readers of "The Liars Club" enthralled. The only happy ending is her smiling author photo, and I don't know if I could have gone to sleep as dawn approached except that her acknowledgements thanked a husband and son for an unconditional love that she thought she'd never feel again.I'm thankful for Jennifer Lauck's happy adult life (and I feel the need after this glowing review to say that I don't know the woman at all), and I'm thankful as well for the talents that allowed her to turn an incredibly painful childhood into a gripping piece of literature.
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Summary: A Little Girl's World
Review: I read this book with a mixture of sadness and awe. Lauck writes from a little girl's perspective so well that I remember feeling some of the same things she described. That feeling up the back of her neck, over the top of her head - I've had that same sensation she described. My childhood was happy and relatively tragedy-free, but any woman can relate to this beautifully written memoir.
Jenny is an inspirational character that you can't help but cheer for. After the horror she went through in her early childhood, I was comforted by the fact that she had known love, albeit imperfect love, from her parents in her early childhood. After all the hurt, the death, the abuse, the hatred, she just kept getting up and going on. She was abandoned at 11, but she didn't stop. She got up, she worked, she washed her face, she got the goop out of the corners of her eyes. This little girl had an inner purpose that she didn't fully know or understand.
I would recommend this book and the follow-up, Still Waters, to any woman born in the 1960's. In some measure we can all relate to Jenny and hope that we would have such a strong will to survive.
Rating:
Summary: real page turner
Review: BLACKBIRD is a fabulous piece of work, a real memoir. Yet almost seems fiction in its accounts of life. This book has some wonderful qualities like that of NIGHTMARES ECHO,LOST BOY and COURAGE TO HEAL.
This is a real page turner,excellent style.
Rating:
Summary: A sad and moving true story
Review: Blackbird is the true story of the author Jennifer Lauck from
tha age of 5 until she was 12. A rather grim portrait of Jennifer as a child, whose mother was chronically ill for most of her young years, and then dies when Jennifer is only 6 As if life hasn't already thrown her a curve ball her father quickly remarries and Jennifer's step-mother,a rather cruel woman at best, brings her own children to the Lauck family. And sure enough her step-mothers children amuse themsleves by tormenting Jennifer knowing that their mother will always side with them. When her father suddenly dies, the author is left with her brother, step-mother,step sisters and step-brother. Now she is at this woman's mercy and Jennifer's childhood spins totally out of control as her step-mother is quite nasty to Jennifer and her brother, then doesn't care properly for Jennifer or her brother and finally sends her away from her brother and step-family to live and work alone in communal home situation when shes not even 12.I really can't say that I enjoyed this book. To do so would make me feel as though I enjoyed sombody else's misery. What I can say is that on several levels I appreciated the writing and gut wrenching emotions which found their way into the pages of this book. I also think there are many questions the book raises not the least is why Jennifer and her brother didn't go to the authorites when left with their step-mother or her mother and father's family now say that thes allegations were untrue. But then one has to wonder why the author would choose to write a book as non-fiction rather than fiction unless her story was true. And for those who wept at the book White Oleander for the young character, Astrid, Jennifer's story will reduce you to the same tears, only more if you believe what she writes is true. As a mother and daughter my heart broke over the childhood Jennifer missed out on. The ordeal she went through kept me up late at night questioning why none of her family members bothered to take either of these children in when they were first orphaned. And the revelation about Jennifer's true parentage had me wondering if life could have been any harder for her than the one she lived as a child in these circumstances. This was truly a a difficult book to to read but also proved to me how some people survive against all odds. The end of the book finds Jennifer on the way to her grandparents home and one can only hope that life will be better for her in the future. What happens as Jennifer continues to grow up is chronicled in the sequel to this book Still Waters which I read shortly after Blackbird. Suffice it to say I found Ms. Lauck to be one strong child and whose life I won't soon forget.
Rating: 
Summary: Found Jennifer's story fascinating as well!
Review: I came across Jennifer Lauck's book quite by accident. The image of the cover struck my fancy, and after reading the cover blurbs by Frank McCourt and others I just had to make time for Ms.Lauck's tragic story. I found the book's momentum picked-up incrementally especially after the passing of her dad midway. By the end of the book (which reads like a novel) I was enraptured and repelled by all that she encountered in her young life. I wouldn't classify this book as an account only "women" would want to read or identify with, since I am a male reader but it seems anyone with a concern for family and family dysfunctionalism et al. should not pass this book by. Can't wait for the sequel;and as much as I'd hate to admit it, I think this would make a good television or film if cast correctly.
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Summary: A Compelling Memoir
Review: As a writing mentor, I work with a number of people who want to write memoirs. Many of them have experienced traumatic childhoods. I routinely recommend that they read Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found, in order to learn how a master of memoir handles writing about abandonment, abuse, and mental illness without blame, self-pity, or sentimentality. Lauck uses her skills as a journalist to shape a compelling memoir of her childhood. Her courage and well-honed craft are outstanding. She not only has connected with readers, but has helped many of them along the path of healing.
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Summary: my story?
Review: I felt like Ms. Lauck was writing my story. Her experiences and feelings were so similar to mine it was unreal. I cried from the moment I picked it up to the second I put it down. I cried because it was a sad story, I cried because I related, I cried because someone had finally put my feelings on paper.
Thank you Jennifer Lauck.
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Summary: A lesson for the fortunate
Review: When I read Jennifer's books, it was a great lesson for me. I learned to be thankful for the way I was raised. (I wonder if my mom will ever read this review?) If you'd like a lesson in gratitude, perseverance, and inner strength despite the obstacles in life, this book is for you. I found it rather encouraging instead of depressing.
Rating:
Summary: Page Turner
Review: This is truly a page turner. I'm glad the sequel was out when I read this so I could go directly into the second book. I'm not one for liking too much description, but she did an outstanding job of helping you feel what she experienced. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: A testament to a child's survival instinct
Review: Perfect use of the child's voice and the child's point of view. It's the only way this story could have been successfully told. Otherwise, it'd read as self-gratifying pathos. In the immediacy of the child's voice, it reads as spare truth without the self-pity that writing from the distance of adulthood might have introduced.
An unbelievable series of tragic events ripped this family apart: death of the mother, remarriage of the father to an unloving woman, death of the father, exploitation by the stepmother in order to continue receiving the social security checks, involvement with some weird religion, persecution and abandonment of the children...the list goes on and on till finally Jennifer is pretty much on her own in a communal quasi-religious household, cut off from all her relatives and still just a child. Rescue by a seemingly loving aunt and uncle comes at the end...but read the sequel to find out the rest of this horrific story.
Yeah, it's depressing - but Blackbird is also full of hope and it's written in such a lyrical style that you can't help but continue reading. However, I'm glad I didn't know any more about the rest of her life till later. Jennifer Lauck was only 11 or 12 at the end of this odyssey of endurance, and you just know that's not the end of her story.
You would be right.
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