One For The Murphy's Summary

Lynda Mullaly Murphy author of One for the Murphy’s was born in the late sixties. Lynda was the youngest of five children and found herself enjoying skateboarding and bike riding more than playing dress up or with dolls. She attended Conard High School in West Hartford CT, and continued her studies at University of Connecticut. She aspired to be a teacher and received a degree in education as well as another degree. Once she began teaching she fell in love with writing, she would write stories for her students to find errors in and grade. She found a lot of joy in being a teacher and helping children connect through writing. She had her first child a girl and left teaching to be a stay at home mom. She has since had another child a boy this …show more content…
The story jumps right into Carley’s journey, she is in the back of the social workers car trying to analyze why she is there and what happened to put her there. Carley is dreading the idea of meeting the new family she has to stay with. Just from the opening any child who has either been in foster care, or had to just move around could relate to the story. The rush of thought Carley talks about are will people like me? Will I fit in? All things that children/young adults feel. Especially if they are starting a new school or a new …show more content…
One day Mrs. Murphey takes Carley to get new clothes for school, Carley acts out and starts making fun of a sever at a restaurant they are eating at. Mrs. Murphy doesn’t yell at her but you can tell she is getting upset. Later you find out the server she was making fun of was a boy in her class, and he started to make fun of her. Carley often says she felt bad about acting out and making fun of him. Another episode was when Daniel made a scene at the dinner table. He said Carley didn’t belong with them and Carley ran out of the house and down the street. She continued running until she couldn’t anymore and lay under a tree until Mrs. Murphy found her and brought her back to the house. You also see conflict between Mrs. Murphey and Mr. Murphey about having taken in Carley. Mrs. Murphy cries over Carley’s outburst of rage and Mr. Murphey says they can send her back if its not working out. Carley overhead this conversation and began to try and help out and be nice to everyone. It was nice when Mr. Murphey and Carley started getting along and watching sports together.
A review I read said this was a great story but too intense for children due to the violence. I can agree with this to some extent, but the abuse portrayed in the book is not gruesome or detailed. You know that abuse took place but it was a very small paragraph on one page of a big book. I think the