Review: Take a Good Look by Jacqueline Wilson
The only way I can describe Take a Good Look by Jacqueline Wilson is a book designed to educate young children about visual impairment gone horribly wrong.
The only way I can describe Take a Good Look by Jacqueline Wilson is a book designed to educate young children about visual impairment gone horribly wrong.
Julian Birch has a “withered” leg from a childhood bout of polio, and Mitchell’s depiction of him is one of the most believable, relatable portrayals of disability I’ve come across.
Stoner & Spaz is funny and often unafraid of ambivalence, and I feel similarly ambivalent: liking a lot of what I got, yet wanting more of the stuff between the lines of what Ben says and does.
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.
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.
It’s a rare occurrence when an author can update an already published book, and even more rare when that update includes a huge overhaul of the portrayal of an autistic character. Alyssa Hillary takes a look at both the original and updated version in this review.
The parallel journeys of Emily and Elizabeth allow author Rodriguez to explore two different expressions of depression, and show her deep understanding of the manifold ways that depression affects people.
For all that there are moments when Rose’s voice is nuanced and shines, those nuances continuously pushed aside for a far more stereotypical narrative. This is not the story of an autistic character written for an inclusive audience; this is a story about an autistic character written for a neurotypical audience.
This is a story about what it’s like to go crazy, and it is brilliantly, masterfully crafted.
It felt like the author used Moritz’s echolocation as a way of avoiding a realistic portrayal of blindness; too many tired blindness tropes popped up throughout the book for me to love and champion it the way others have.