An engaging memoir of one boy’s experience of growing up with ADHD with a risky message around medication cessation.
Page explores his childhood experiences with ADHD in this graphic memoir.
Young towheaded Tyler’s diagnosis of ADHD results in a prescription for Ritalin to help him behave, though it certainly doesn’t fix a dysfunctional family life marked by his father’s uncontrolled rage. In the 1980s and ’90s, when ADHD was poorly understood, recognition of Tyler’s neurodiversity is delayed because his schoolwork—when he completes it—is good. He struggles to keep friends and handle his anger, but the medication aids with focus. Despite his learning that Ritalin’s more likely to be associated with weight loss, Tyler blames his pubescent weight gain on both the drug and ADHD–fueled disordered eating, so the summer after 10th grade he stops taking it. Despite a two-sentence parenthetical that suddenly stopping Ritalin without consulting a doctor was unwise, adult-narrator Page clearly associates life changes he considers positive (growing taller, losing weight, becoming more social) with his self-prescribed medication change. The narrator describes the adult ADHD that will plague future Tyler, but the memoir closes with his happily leaving home after successfully graduating high school. Readers who pay more attention to Tyler’s story than to the interspersed scientific information and narrator’s asides will likely feel that self-treatment was the correct choice. Expressive cartoon-style art in bright, saturated colors and clear speech bubbles make this a visually enticing work.
An engaging memoir of one boy’s experience of growing up with ADHD with a risky message around medication cessation. (author's note, photographs, art notes) (Graphic memoir. 11-14)Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-75834-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Born in 1880 in a tiny backwater in Alabama, Helen Keller lived a life familiar to many from the play and movie The Miracle Worker, as well as countless biographies. There’s no denying the drama in the story of the deaf and blind child for whom the world of language became possible through a dedicated and fanatically stubborn teacher, Annie Sullivan. But Helen’s life after that is even more remarkable: she went to high school and then to Radcliffe; she was a radical political thinker and a member of the Wobblies; she supported herself by lecture tours and vaudeville excursions as well as through the kindness of many. Dash (The Longitude Prize, p. 1483) does a clear-sighted and absorbing job of examining Annie’s prickly personality and the tender family that she, Helen, and Annie’s husband John Macy formed. She touches on the family pressures that conspired to keep Helen from her own pursuit of love and marriage; she makes vivid not only Helen’s brilliant and vibrant intelligence and personality, but the support of many people who loved her, cared for her, and served her. She also does not shrink from the describing the social and class divisions that kept some from crediting Annie Sullivan and others intent on making Helen into a puppet and no more. Riveting reading for students in need of inspiration, or who’re overcoming disability or studying changing expectations for women. (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-590-90715-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
As in their previous collaborations (Colors of Freedom, Voices of Rape, not reviewed), Bode and Mack portray an issue through the voices of children and adults affected by it. Bode (recently deceased) interviewed preteens, their parents, and adult experts, and organized their responses into parts "For Girls and Boys" and "For Parents." In sections with titles like "Public Recognition" or "What's in Your Heart," her text, addressed directly to the reader, synthesizes many of the responses in a way that should comfort and challenge young and adult readers. At least half of the book is comprised of responses she gathered from her survey, some of which are illustrated in strips by Mack. The result is an engagingly designed book, with questions and topics in bold type so that readers can browse for the recognition they may be looking for. They will need to browse, as there is no index, and young readers will certainly be tempted by the "For Parents" section, and vice versa. A bibliography (with two Spanish titles) and list of Web resources (with mostly live links) will help them seek out more information. They may well have other questions—especially having to do with parents' sexuality—which they don't find answered here, but this is a fine and encouraging place to start. (print and on-line resources) (Non-fiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-81945-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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