An invigorating, encouraging read.
A memoir that attempts to answer the question, how do we determine the differences between gifted and disabled?
By even the most conservative of estimates, the number of children diagnosed with autism in the United States has skyrocketed in recent decades. However, the rise is attributed not to an increase in individuals with autism, but the changing methods of diagnosing the disorder. Also changing is how we respond to different facets of autism, which is at the heart of Barnett's memoir. Her son Jake received a diagnosis at the age of 2, which set off a series of standard educational responses; research indicates that a focus on daily life skills—self care, motor skills, etc.—provides the best chances of success. Jake's educational plan was no different, except that when the teacher discouraged the author from letting Jake engage too much with his alphabet learning cards, it simply didn't feel right. Barnett took an approach that instead focused on what she would refer to as his "spark," hoping to bring out the strengths that were at risk of being overshadowed by his perceived deficits. Focusing on his interests and strengths came with its own set of risks; there was no guarantee that reinventing his education would have an end result that would be any different than the standard education plan. Not working on “achievable” goals could result in frustrations that would hamper future efforts to help him learn core life skills. Barnett’s approach would not, of course, necessarily work for all parents, but that’s part of the point. Her wrestling with the choices she faced is laid bare on the page, and readers get a sense that she has ideas bigger than just her family. Her success with Jake is unimpeachable: He is a “prodigy in math and science” who “began taking college-level courses in math, astronomy, and physics at eight and was accepted to university at nine.”
An invigorating, encouraging read.Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0812993370
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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