What the Wind Can Tell You
Jul. 17th, 2018 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraI thought I had this on my to-read list but couldn't find it. We actually got it out of the library because a friend of Junie's recommended it - the author, Sarah Marie A. Jette, was Junie's friend's downstairs neighbor, and is right now, funnily enough, Junie's teacher for her summer class this week, Monster Sewing! So it was neat for Junie to get to tell her she liked her book, and tomorrow I might ask Junie to pass on that I liked it too.
What the Wind Can Tell You is a middlegrade... let's say "novel with fantasy elements", I feel like "fantasy novel" might set up the wrong expectations. It's about a seventh grade girl and her disabled older brother and the way the family reacts to changes in her brother's severe epilepsy, and the girl's discovery that those changes mean that she can travel with her brother into another world where he can walk and talk to her. No idea what actual disabled people have said about this book, but I mostly really liked it - I liked how it painted a picture of how her brother is living a life of value despite the constraints of his situation, and how it showed the deep love between the siblings. (What I didn't like was this whole weird thing about the dad having seriously disordered eating, and the way that was handled... I'm really uncomfortable with depictions of binge eating/compulsive eating/competitive eating, major content note for that (and an emet warning).)
Anyways, might appeal to fans of When You Reach Me, or Wonder, which Junie read in school and liked. Occurs to me that with both of those plus the graphic novel El Deafo, which Junie also read on a friend's recommendation and liked, Junie has already seen so many more positive portrayals of disabled characters than I had at that age. I'm struggling to think of anyone besides Mary in Little House who even was disabled, let alone positive portrayals... okay, I have cheated and used the internet and come up with Colin from Secret Garden (who gets cured), Pollyanna (who gets cured), Clara from Heidi (cured), a couple of the lives Charles Wallace jumps into in Swiftly Tilting Planet, Deenie (do I actually recall correctly that Deenie gets transferred to special ed classes because she gets diagnosed with scoliosis?)... I'm glad that contemporary kidlit seems to be doing better!
What the Wind Can Tell You is a middlegrade... let's say "novel with fantasy elements", I feel like "fantasy novel" might set up the wrong expectations. It's about a seventh grade girl and her disabled older brother and the way the family reacts to changes in her brother's severe epilepsy, and the girl's discovery that those changes mean that she can travel with her brother into another world where he can walk and talk to her. No idea what actual disabled people have said about this book, but I mostly really liked it - I liked how it painted a picture of how her brother is living a life of value despite the constraints of his situation, and how it showed the deep love between the siblings. (What I didn't like was this whole weird thing about the dad having seriously disordered eating, and the way that was handled... I'm really uncomfortable with depictions of binge eating/compulsive eating/competitive eating, major content note for that (and an emet warning).)
Anyways, might appeal to fans of When You Reach Me, or Wonder, which Junie read in school and liked. Occurs to me that with both of those plus the graphic novel El Deafo, which Junie also read on a friend's recommendation and liked, Junie has already seen so many more positive portrayals of disabled characters than I had at that age. I'm struggling to think of anyone besides Mary in Little House who even was disabled, let alone positive portrayals... okay, I have cheated and used the internet and come up with Colin from Secret Garden (who gets cured), Pollyanna (who gets cured), Clara from Heidi (cured), a couple of the lives Charles Wallace jumps into in Swiftly Tilting Planet, Deenie (do I actually recall correctly that Deenie gets transferred to special ed classes because she gets diagnosed with scoliosis?)... I'm glad that contemporary kidlit seems to be doing better!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-18 01:35 pm (UTC)When S's class read Wonder and took a field trip to see the movie I sent this essay to her teacher; I don't think any classroom discussion came of it, though.