How well can a bureaucracy replace the family? For the more than 450,000 children living in foster care, this question is crucial. Yet, when the public tries to peer into this largely hidden world, administrators frequently invoke the need for "confidentiality." And the young people themselves - those who really know what foster care is like - are rarely heard.

Now, for the first time, The Heart Knows Something Different gives them a voice. In well-crafted narratives that are remarkable for their candor, range of experience, and hard-won insight, more than three dozen young writers (ages 15-20) provide an insider's view of growing up in "the system.".

In his Foreword, Jonathan Kozol writes, "The dominant theme in this book ... is the power of transcendent moral courage in so many of these young survivors ... [T]here is a special miracle at stake when affirmation of this sort is voiced by those who are surrounded by the symbols of destruction as they speak." Intimate and honest, The Heart Knows Something Different shows us, from the inside, looking out, the mix of pain and fear, and sometimes hope and happiness that the foster care experience involves.