A love for children was an enduring theme in Helga Houmere's life. As a teenager in her native Germany, she earned a certificate as an accredited kindergarten teacher. World War II interfered with her plans. She was able to realize her dreams after emigrating to the U.S. in 1954 and receiving BS and MS degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University. She held jobs at day care centers and summer camps before working in the nursery school at Sarah Lawrence College. Eventually, she became the Director of the International Nursery School in Queens.

In "Learning from a Lost Childhood," Ms. Houmere describes her early life after her mother died and her father was unable to care for her. She found some refuge at her aunt's farm. By 1939, she was working in a day care center in Berlin and preparing to marry. Then the war intervened. She describes the effects of the war on civilians in moving detail from spending time in bomb shelters, having her home destroyed, scrounging for food, walking for miles when transportation was disrupted, seeking refuge in Austria, finding any kind of work when her career path was interrupted and learning that her fiancé, a German soldier, had been killed.

The second half of the memoir describes her life in the U.S. Ms. Houmere became interested in the educational theories of John Dewey which emphasized freedom and were so different from those she learned in Germany. When she met a sponsor, an American lawyer who had been born in Germany, she was able to obtain an immigration visa. She sailed to New York on the Gripsholm.

In addition to her work as a childhood educator, Ms. Houmere describes her summers spent at Monhegan, an island in Maine and her life with her husband, the artist Walter Houmere. In 1970 she moved to Queens where she still lives.

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