'One School, One Book': her story

The emotional letters always get to her. No matter that she's doing all a 24-year-old can to make it better. No matter that not so long ago, she was right smack where they are in their sadness and pain.

That doesn't stop Ashley Rhodes-Courter's heart from breaking a little with each teenager's secretive words scribbled on lined notebook paper and addressed to her.

Rhodes-Courter has been impressing adults from the time she was a whip-smart Tampa teenager who won a New York Times essay contest about her miserable childhood ricocheting from foster home to foster home in Hillsborough County.

Eventually adopted by loving parents at age 12, she kept up her grades and perfected her writing chops. Her memoir, "Three Little Words," ended up on the New York Times bestseller list in 2008 and garnered the charismatic, articulate redhead TV interviews and fame.

Her awards are legion; the roster of famous people she has met is impressive. She is in demand as a speaker who encourages adoption.

But now, as part of the "One School, One Book" program, her life story is traveling into middle and high school classrooms nationwide, finding the children who need it most. In Hillsborough County, "Three Little Words" was chosen by district reading specialists as one of five books for schools to read aloud together.

That thrills the young writer.

"I think it gives students hope," says Rhodes-Courter, who recently graduated with honors from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg with a double major in communications and theatre and a double minor in political science and psychology.

"So many foster children go to school feeling ashamed, when it's not their fault. They really open up to me. Some say they are inspired to write and go to school."

She has spoken to several Hillsborough County schools this year, along with a number of others throughout the country. The display case at a school in New Jersey featured items from her book: an Easy Bake Oven, a treasured gift she thought was from her mother that was later taken away by a cruel foster parent; and a duplicate of a beloved Teddy Ruxpin doll named "Winky" that was pulled from her 3-year-old hands by a thoughtless child welfare worker.

The display case surprised her.

"That was really nice, but kind of strange, too," says Rhodes-Courter, a personable young woman who is quick to laugh.

Always after her talks, students come up to her to share their stories. They call her their hero.

Rhodes-Courter had 19 foster parents, some of them abusive. Others were sexual offenders. Forty-four child welfare caseworkers were involved in those placements, which began at age 3. Her mother, a foster child herself when she became pregnant with Ashley at age 17, took drugs and lived with an abusive boyfriend.

"My dad would beat my mom so I can really understand your pain," wrote one middle school student, who grew up in Plant City, in a letter to the author. "We were always moving and sometimes would have to live in our car, most likely because my dad would use the money for the rent to buy beer and drugs."

Another described the "black hole" in his heart when the boy's dad took custody of him and he realized his mother was never coming back.

"Reading your book made me feel like it is okay to miss your mom and cry for her," he wrote.

Students from healthy families tell her the book has given them a new appreciation for their parents.

Judy Schoop, reading specialist at Jefferson High School, said each period throughout the day, teachers read aloud for about five minutes from the book.

"The students complained if the teachers forgot," she says.

The fact that the kids recognized the schools and locations really brought it home.

"Ashley had such an impact on the kids," Schoop says. "She makes it real."

In March, Rhodes-Courter married Erick Smith, her high school sweetheart. Both are volunteer guardian ad litems, helping foster children navigate the court system. In addition to a full schedule of speaking engagements, she is working on a second book aimed at helping teenagers overcome adversity.

"Three Little Words" also is in development as a major theatrical release by director James Mangold of "3:10 to Yuma," "Walk the Line," "Girl, Interrupted" and "Knight and Day," to be released this summer. An experienced screenwriter is at work on the script.

Rhodes-Courter has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America and Montel Williams, and for a time her smiling picture graced the bag of 99-cent Cool Ranch Doritos.

Her fame has left her far from jaded.

"I'm able to go to IMDb Internet Move Database and find my name!" she says.

Since writing the book, Rhodes-Courter has become closer to her birth mother, who no longer abuses drugs and now cares for a 10-year-old daughter.

"I'm not giving my mom a free pass, but I understand," Rhodes-Courter says. "I get it. These difficult issues of poverty and domestic violence, I understand."

She says she isn't bitter because it's a waste of time.

When she married Smith on a cruise, she was joined by 60 family members and friends, including adoptive parents Gay and Phil Courter of Crystal River and her birth mother and sister.

"I joke that with Gay and Phil, I look at art, read great literature and travel," she says, laughing. "With my mom and her family from North Carolina, I go to Walmart, buy camo and go muddin'."

"Three Little Words" is published by Simon & Schuster's Atheneum Books. Her website is www.rhodes-courter.com.