A LITTLE POTATO AND HARD TO PEEL

A dramatized memoir of a young boy overcoming a disability.

In his debut book, Harrell presents a lightly fictionalized version of his own childhood, reassuring his readers that “all the stories that make up this story come from a place of truth.” David Harrell is born with a limb difference—his right arm ends in a nub with little protrusions where his fingers should be. The young David has an unbeatably sunny disposition, and he and his friends joke and clown around about everything, including his arm. But in the wake of what he calls “the great cafeteria kerfuffle,” in which he asks a girl to go steady with him and she walks away (presumably because of his arm), his parents take him to the hospital. He is given a prosthetic myoelectric arm, with sensors that align with his muscles in order to respond to his commands. He is initially uncomfortable, naturally; “I look in the mirror by the bathroom to see how realistic it looks,” Harrell writes. “Will this work? Will this make me normal enough for a girl to want to be my girlfriend?” When he returns to school, his friends think his “Luke Skywalker hand” is cool, and with his renewed self-confidence he runs for student council, weathers the death of his beloved grandfather, and throws himself into sports. Harrell conveys his simple tale with touching fidelity to the worldview and priorities of a young boy who’s nervous around girls and sometimes feels anguished by self-doubt (“I am scared I will break the paper cup with the punch if I try to hold it,” he thinks at one point. “God, I wish I could have two hands right now”). The book’s message of can-do optimism, exemplified by David’s determination not to let adversity “peel away the core of who we are,” is ultimately moving.

A funny and touching fictionalized true story of a boy overcoming obstacles.