City Kid is the true story of how

the concentrated love and attention

of one teacher changed a child s life.

Mary MacCracken had taught se-

riously emotionally disturbed chil-

dren for more than six years when

the school where she taught became

"state approved" To continue teach-

ing, Mary had to go back to school,

after a twenty-five-year absence, to

become certified. Toiling away in

seemingly pointless courses such as

Background of Mathematics I and

Statistics and Orientation to Psycho-

logical Testing, she asked herself

time and again, "But where are the

children?"

Then Mary found Luke. In a tuto-

rial program at School 23, Mary met

the small, withdrawn second-grader

who was falling behind in school and

who already had a record of twenty-

four arrests for arson, theft, and tru-

ancy. How could a little kid like that,

she wondered, be the juvenile delin-

quent of this bulging file? And how

could she help him?

City Kid is the story of how Mary

earned Luke s trust and friendship; of

their sessions in the musty, unused

music room -- making up stories,

reading, doing math problems -- as

they worked side by side to bring

Luke up to grade level; and of their

forays beyond the classroom-- to the

corner Dunkin Donuts, to the Mac-

Crackens house in the country, and

to Luke s secret mountain rekreat on

the outskirts of town. It is the story