Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Learning specialist Grossberg (Autism and Your Teen) interweaves memoir, psychology, and exposé in this juicy yet sympathetic account of the 15 years she spent tutoring the privileged students of New York City's elite private schools. When she took on private clients in addition to her full-time job working with students with ADHD and "learning differences" such as dyslexia, Grossberg developed a reputation as "a kind of tutoring messiah." She delves into the high demand for tutors in New York, where some tutoring companies charge as much as $800 per hour, and describes the "endless strategy and conniving" that parents employ to get their children into "the Ivy League or Stanford." Throughout, Grossberg spotlights the wealth gap between her and her students (one of whom gets ridiculed at the Brooklyn bodega where he tries to buy a $2 bagel with his father's Amex Gold Card), but she also expresses genuine empathy for the pressures they and their parents face (The Great Gatsby is frequently invoked), shares inspiring stories of educational breakthroughs, and offers concrete advice on the college application process. This nuanced chronicle humanizes an oft-caricatured world. Agent: Jessica Papin, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A tutor gives low grades to rich, meddlesome parents of the New York prep schoolers she calls "Gatsby's children." Grossberg taught for years at an elite Manhattan prep school while moonlighting as a tutor for middle and high schoolers who might return from a weekend "and report that they had been introduced to Bono at a concert and had gone skiing." She recalls her alternately rewarding and maddening experiences, focused on students with learning differences, in a book that "has elements of memoir." She uses composite characters to show how the ultrarich work--or game--a system that favors families who can afford space camp and "$800--per hour" SAT tutors. Lily's mother demands that a school let her daughter retake a test because the proctor miscalculated the allotted time by one minute. Trevor's father expects after-school tutor Grossberg to know whether his son uses his ADHD accommodations at school because "I'm not home enough to collect more than core samples on my son." Sophie's mother plays "the legal card" so her daughter can redo a paper after her father is charged with unrelated financial missteps in the New York Times. Students suffer from the interference by "litigious and combative" parents of Gatsby-like wealth: "The result of all this meddling in their children's lives…is that many kids achieve beyond their ability, so that tutoring has to follow them to college." Some children deal with anxiety, depression, exhaustion, or White privilege (they resent having to watch the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize in class). Grossberg's novelistic flourishes ("She pauses for a minute and licks her lips nervously") can be distracting, but most of her stories ring true and insightfully support her broad point that fear drives the parental excesses: "These parents, having achieved the apogee of success and wealth, have nowhere to go but down." A sobering close-up of parental wealth and power--and the children hurt by it--at tony Manhattan schools. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.