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Crossing the water :
eighteen months on an island working with troubled boys — a teacher's memoir / Daniel
Robb. - New York : Simon & Schuster, 2001. - 287 p. :
ill., map ; 22 cm.
ISBN 0-7432-0238-4
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NOTE DE L'ÉDITEUR : Off the coast of Cape Cod lies a small
windswept island called Penikese. Alone on the island is a school
for juvenile delinquents, the Penikese Island School, where Daniel
Robb lived and worked as a teacher, not far from the mainland
town where he grew up. By turns harsh, desolate, and starkly
beautiful, the island offers its temporary residents respite
from lives filled with abuse, violence, and chaos. But as Robb
discovers, peace, solitude, and a structured lifestyle can go
only so far toward healing the anger and hurt he finds not only
in his students but within himself — feelings left over
from the broken home of his childhood. Lyrical and heartfelt,
Crossing the Water is the memoir of his first eighteen
months on Penikese, and a poignant meditation on the many ways
that young men can become lost.
Ranging in age from fourteen
to seventeen and numbering up to eight at a time, Robb's students
at Penikese have been convicted of crimes including arson, assault,
and armed robbery. They are tough, troubled kids who are sentenced
to the school by courts in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. During
their time at Penikese, they live in a house together with the
staff of four and share the responsibilities of living on the
island — chopping wood, cooking meals, maintaining and repairing
the buildings, caring for the farm animals, and doing other chores.
For many of the students, it's the first time they've experienced
such a combination of discipline and freedom, or the kind of
trust extended to them by the staff. And despite their resistance
and sometime wildness, Robb soon finds that they have the capacity
not only to confound but to surprise him, both with their insight
and their vulnerability. In Crossing the Water, he renders
the boys' voices and his life with them — the confrontations,
the rare epiphanies, the flashes of humor — with great vividness. | ❙ | Daniel
Robb, a carpenter and writer, has been an editor of academic journals ;
a teacher in Mississipi, New York, and Massachusetts ; a political
consultant ; and the proprietor of a literary services business. He
holds degrees from Middlebury College and the Breadloaf School of
English. He lives in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. |
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COMPLÉMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE
colonies pénitentiaires et bagnes pour enfants | - George Cadwalader, « Castaways : the Penikese island experiment », White River Junction (Vermont) : Chelsea Green publishing, 1988
- Alexis Danan, « L'épée du scandale », Paris : Robert Laffont, 1961
- Jean-Claude Gritti, « Les enfants de l'île du Levant », Paris : JC Lattès, 1999
- Jacques Prévert, « Chasse à l'enfant » in Paroles, Paris : Gallimard (Folio), 2004
- Louis Roubaud, « Les enfants de Caïn », Paris, 1925
- René Santoni, « La colonie horticole de Saint-Antoine », Ajaccio : chez l'auteur, 2008
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| mise-à-jour : 7 août 2012 |
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