The Hungry Child Summary

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a picture book written and illustrated by Eric Carle. It follows the life cycle of a caterpillar as it starts by coming out of its egg, all the way to becoming a butterfly. It teaches the days of the week and counting up to five. It is hugely popular, and has been translated into 50 different languages. The Hungry Tide Summary. On a train to the Indian city of Canning, Kanai Dutt, a wealthy middle-aged translator from New Delhi, meets Piya Roy, a young Indian-American marine biologist. Both are traveling to the Sundarbans: Kanai, who's been there once before, is going to visit his aunt and read his late uncle's notebook, while Piya is carrying out a survey of the region's dolphins. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. What even is this book. I mean, yes, it’s about a very hungry caterpillar. He’s so damn hungry, he eats, like, the whole world, and then gets really big and turns into a butterfly the end. But let’s look more closely at this seemingly innocuous children’s classic. No Kid Hungry is a national campaign run by Share Our Strength, a nonprofit working to solve problems of hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world. After 25 years of successfully investing in local nonprofits and helping find the best approaches to eradicating poverty and hunger, Share Our Strength launched No Kid Hungry in 2010.

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The Hungry Child Summary Analysis

One of the most powerful parts of this chapter for me wasDr. Perry’s initial interpretations of Virginia, Laura’s mother. I was soimpressed with how he honored Virginia and her undeniably important role inLaura’s life and recovery. The stark contrast between the two pages thatdescribed the various invasive medical procedures performed on Laura, herdoctors’ resistance to searching for any psychological explanations for her poorhealth, and her overwhelming medical history and the single sentence thatportrayed Perry’s approach to Laura’s case—reading the intake report anddeciding to simply introduce himself to Laura and her mother—left a smile on myface. While he was clearly interested in Laura’s medical history, he did notburden himself with a preliminary analysis of the ins and outs of the seeminglyendless hospital records and chose instead to focus on Laura and her mother ashumans deserving of a compassionate introduction. This set him apart from everyother medical professional Laura and Virginia had interacted with and laid thefoundation for an empowering therapeutic alliance.

I considered our readings from the week of the 20^thon engaging parents as partners in the therapeutic process (Cates, Packman,Paone, & Margolis, 2006; Kottman, 2003). Instead of actively including (oreven making basic attempts to engage) Virginia in her daughter’s treatment, thevarious professionals that worked with Laura pathologized Virginia as aninadequate mother, ignored her, and even discouraged her from interacting withher daughter. Simple attempts to demonstrate basic compassion, engage Virginiaas an expert on her life, or identify her strengths as a mother early on mayhave put both her and her daughter on a completely different and smoother pathto recovery. Perry demonstrated these essential skills from his firstinteractions with Virginia and Laura and went above and beyond to understandVirginia’s background and tailor treatment to her unique needs.

This is the first chapter in which Perry extensivelyhighlighted the importance of caregivers in a traumatized child’s developmentand journey to healing. His focus on helping Virginia process through her ownexperiences of childhood trauma and neglect and learn to facilitate nurturing,loving interactions between herself and her daughter resonated with me. Ithought about the parents who want nothing more than to provide their childrenwith a different childhood experience than the one they had growing up and aredead set on not repeating the patterns of maladaptive caregiving behavior,abuse, or neglect that they experienced at the hands of their own caregivers.While this is an admirable perspective and many parents are able to raise theirchildren differently than they were raised, the past often remains stored inthe deepest, most unconscious parts of our psyche. Logically deciding to be adifferent kind of parent is simply not enough, which was illustrated clearlyand empathically in this chapter with Virginia. Reading about Perry’s referralof Virginia and Laura to Mama P was a deeply emotional experience: thistreatment approach was restorative for both Laura and her mother, who neededthe same nurturing, curative love and care that her daughter did.

On a train to the Indian city of Canning, Kanai Dutt, a wealthy middle-aged translator from New Delhi, meets Piya Roy, a young Indian-American marine biologist. Both are traveling to the Sundarbans: Kanai, who's been there once before, is going to visit his aunt and read his late uncle's notebook, while Piya is carrying out a survey of the region's dolphins. Kanai invites Piya to visit him in Lusibari.

When Kanai meets his aunt, Nilima, he finds that she is still deeply impacted by his uncle's death decades ago and that the natural landscape of the Sundarbans has already changed since his visit as a child. Furthermore, he learns that his childhood friend Kusum was killed in a 1979 massacre. Her son, Fokir, is now a fisherman with a wife, Moyna, and son of his own, Tutul.

When Kanai begins reading his uncle's notebook, he discovers it was written in a very short amount of time as his uncle, Nirmal, tried to fight to protect the refugees who had settled on a local island from the government's aggression.

Meanwhile, Piya begins her survey alongside a forest guard, who's required to accompany her, and a boater named Mej-da. Both of them are rude to her and offer no help. They approach a fisherman in the water, and the forest guard fines him for supposedly poaching. Trying to surreptitiously give the fisherman some money in return, Piya falls off her boat, and the fisherman rescues her. She decides to ask him to take her to Lusibari, and he turns out to be kind and respectful, though they do not speak the same language. He introduces himself as Fokir, accompanied by Tutul. The next day, the group observes dolphins behaving differently than usual, which intrigues Piya. As they travel, Piya and Fokir get along extremely well and find that their work styles are very complementary despite their apparent differences.

Kanai continues reading Nirmal's notebook, which tells of his dedication to Marxist theory and his decision to involve himself in the plight of the refugees, partially because of Kusum, who he has romantic feelings for. Against the wishes of Nilima, his wife, Nirmal travels to Morichjhãpi repeatedly. One day, police begin a siege on the island and destroy a boat filled with refugees. Kusum and her young son Fokir survive, but Kusum is later killed.

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Impressed with Fokir, Piya hires him for a week to help her survey the dolphins in the region. Kanai comes along to serve as a translator, and they bring Nilima and Nirmal's friend Horen, who owns a large boat. When the boat's engine dies, they float to a nearby village. That night, they hear loud voices and find a tiger captured in a building surrounded by angry people. Wanting to protect the tiger, Piya tries to break up the mob, but Kanai stops her. Later, he admonishes her for wanting to protect the tiger at the cost of the local people.

The Hungry Child Summary Book

One day, as Fokir and Kanai observe the dolphins together, Fokir suggests going ashore to an island he believes is protected by Bon Bibi, a goddess. As they trudge through the mud, Kanai falls over and gets angry, sending Fokir away. He arrives onshore trying desperately to escape the crocodiles of the area, then runs into a clearing where he sees a tiger. Slowly, he backs away and returns to the rest of the group, who don't believe he saw the tiger. Kanai decides to return to Lusibari along with Horen.

Soon, Horen and Kanai realize that a major cyclone is coming, but when they turn around, they can't find Piya and Fokir. After waiting overnight, they decide they can wait no longer if they want to save themselves, so they return to Lusibari. Wading to shore, Kanai falls and drops Nirmal's notebook. He promises to rewrite the notebook from memory, and Nilima asks him to include her story as well.

The Hungry Child Summary Analysis

Fokir and Piya tie themselves to a tree on an island, but Fokir is crushed by a large flying object. Piya manages to navigate back towards Lusibari, running into Kanai and Horen. She stays in Lusibari for a few weeks longer, then returns soon after, planning to work on a conservation program alongside Nilima.