Keri’s anxiety seems more of a framing device than anything else; The Shattering doesn’t contain as thorough a portrayal of anxiety as I’d hoped for, though its representations of other kinds of diversity more than make up for that.
Overall, I found the portrayal of pediatric cancer iffy—better than some, worse than others. Rather than unthinking stereotypes, though, these shortcomings felt like a result of a lack of personal experience or oversights in research.
Queens of Geek is an authentic and refreshing portrayal of an autistic and anxious girl.
Skim does a good job of showing misguided attempts to help those with depression, and lets the reader see the absurdity for themselves.
This is a book about a girl with an autistic brother. The autistic brother is crucial to the plot, but her actual brother is really more of a plot device than anything else.
A snarky New York Times column referred to CFS as “yuppie flu,” and oh, it was hilarious. Those silly rich people imagining themselves sick!
Rogue is one of the rare novels about an autistic character written by an autistic author, and the book raises many intriguing questions to discuss.
Pete’s autism is portrayed over and over again as being non-stop pain and suffering. That got incredibly hard to read; do people really think this is what autism is like?
An exceptionalist narrative might, at first glance, seem like a positive or even empowering one. But, as it always goes when it comes to depictions of disability, the situation is much more complicated than that-
A poster child, to me, is a child with a disability who is “shown off” as a way to generate funds, awareness, understanding, more funds. Mostly funds, in my experience.