Children

Children's lives and issues thread through the stories written by Melissa Ludtke since her work as a journalist in the 1980s through her book writing as an author until now as essayist. In the early 1980s at Time Melissa focused on the coverage of family and children's issues, and was often assigned to cover stories about the lives of girls and women. Through the years her reporting drove more than a dozen cover stories about issues ranging from the child care quality to how babies learn, from examining the crisis of teenage pregnancy to challenges associated with maternal use of crack cocaine's affect on babies, from juvenile courts into K-12 classrooms. In August,1988, Melissa's intimately reported portraits of five children's lives comprised "Through the Eyes of Children," an 18-page Time cover story. In her digital book "Touching Home in China," she employed similar intimacy in her storytelling about girls' lives in 21st century China, including her project's opening story, "Abandoned Babies." 

Through the Eyes of Children, Time

Childhood: The Delectable Land. Like Cardiff Hill, it lies just far enough away from the adult mind tone dreamy, to shimmer with a sentimental abstraction, if one does not recall it too precisely ...

'They Cannot Fend for Themselves,' Time 

The path that led Marian Wright Edelman to become one of Washington's most unusual lobbyists began on April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Then a civil right lawyer ... 

Abandoned Baby, Touching Home in China

Did the baby cry when the hands holding her set her down? Or was she sleeping so soundly that when placed gently on the ground she did not wake up? Swaddled for her journey on this September day ...