Review: Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
Wonderstruck is wonderful. It is, to date, the most creative and ambitious novel about the d/Deaf experience in America I’ve ever come across.
Wonderstruck is wonderful. It is, to date, the most creative and ambitious novel about the d/Deaf experience in America I’ve ever come across.
The Categorical Universe of Candice Phee is a fun, well-written book, if an imperfect autism read.
Insecure autistic boy meets thoughtful, magical adventure: The Real Boy is now my go-to recommendation when people ask for books with autistic protagonists.
Although I sometimes genuinely enjoyed myself while reading this book, those times were unfortunately outweighed by the serious inaccuracies.
In science-fiction and fantasy, you invariably run into fictional disabilities and allegories. Do these “count” as disability? What makes them work successfully in a book?
We have so few stories—especially lighthearted ones—with wheelchair-using characters that I’d hoped I’d be able to recommend I Funny, but it’s a dangerous narrative wrapped up and presented as “good messages.”
Some people call OCD a doubting disease. Corey Ann Haydu infuses her story with the back-and-forth, pulsing presence of this doubt, resulting in a first-person, insider’s account of what the condition feels like for many.
Although Kurt’s character seems to largely exist to serve the central romance, I was pleasantly surprised by how many pitfalls Perkins avoided in a wonderfully understated manner. Various assumptions and tropes were casually turned over with a single line here or there.
Venkatraman creates a fully-formed character, and nails both the details and the emotion of having a limb amputated and adjusting to life afterwards.
When Deenie was first published, it may well have been a positive representation of the experience of a child with scoliosis, but it hasn’t held up well.