This book is incredibly well-researched and helped open me up to an entire new way of thinking about our American mythos around orphans, foster care, and child welfare system in general. The book was strongest for me when it leaned into the ways popular culture and narrative have driven policy across history, I especially enjoyed looking at some of my own problematic faves like The Boxcar Children and Boy Meets World with this new lens.

This was a DNF for me. I really tried to get into the book, but the content matter must not have been the right fit for me at this time.

Martin explores the way orphans are portrayed in popular media and the many ways that portrayal differs from what children actually experienced in orphanages of the past all the way to modern foster care. I found it very interesting to learn about the ways the care of children in need evolved from orphanages to foster care and how some of the issues that existed in the past continued to survive into the present and how pop culture can blind us to these facts.

It was an interesting read about a topic I knew very little about.

A look at what it was really like in America's Orphanages and Orphanhood and it was dark. It was kind of depressing to read bout but it was an informative read and it's something that needs to be told.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book. These opinions are completely my own.

I'd like to start by saying that by using Annie as so of the bar to compare real world experience throughout the book is genius. Almost every young and old are familiar with some version of the story l


The book was full of interesting information and it managed to tell history with compassion,but not judgement or pity no. Just gave the facts and allowed the reader to make their own judgements with the facts given.

When I began reading The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow by Kristen Martin, I certainly did not expect to read an uplifting book. Quite simply, being an orphan is sad to begin with and the system which orphans find themselves does not help. That said, Martin's passion, or more accurately rage, goes a bit too far in my opinion.

Martin was an orphan herself although she admits she did not end up in an orphanage or foster care. However, she has done some excellent research into the subject and walks the reader through the ways orphans have been cared for since the found of the U.S. Spoiler: it's been a disaster the whole time! I want to be clear that I completely agree with Martin that the system is broken. My problem was with the presentation of it in this book.

Martin covers way too much ground in a scant 300ish pages. For example, Christine Keneally's Ghosts of the Orphanage (which I highly recommend and is quoted directly in this book) is about the same length and talks about just one institution. Martin needs to cover a lot more which means she needs to generalize often and the individual stories are short. The other problem is Martin's relentless negativity. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to be mad about. However, you need to give the reader a breather once in a while from the sheer negativity. I thought Martin might give the Quakers a positive spin for instance but they were almost immediately called white saviors even while they avoided the horrible abuses of Protestant and Catholic orphanages.

In the end, there is some solid research and an author who cares deeply about the subject. I was not a fan of the presentation, but I wouldn't tell people to avoid the book.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and PublicAffairs Books.)

Being an adoptive mom and someone who has written about the topic, I am drawn to stories like this new title from Martin. I was in awe of the research that she did for this book. It was well-crafted and my favorite parts are the comparisons and deep looks into America's media portrayal of orphans throughout history. Thanks very much to NetGalley for the ARC.