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\n\t\t\t\tBUY ON BOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t\tBOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& support independent bookstores\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/article> \n\n\t<\/center><\/div>If there\u2019s a book about an amputee, it\u2019s usually about someone who has lost a limb later in life.\u00a0 Often I can find elements of relatability in these stories, but it\u2019s never quite right.\u00a0 Books like Izzy Willy Nilly<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0One-Handed Catch<\/a><\/em>, both amputee stories, are about adjusting to a new physical reality.\u00a0 When you\u2019re born with a physical difference, you don\u2019t have to adjust to it.\u00a0 It\u2019s always a part of you.\u00a0 The adjustments that I make to do things one-handedly are almost subconscious.\u00a0 So I was excited to discover that\u00a0Dangerous<\/em>\u00a0by Shannon Hale<\/a> featured a protagonist with a congenital amputation, but I was also very skeptical of any writer\u2019s ability to write my experience accurately.<\/p>\nDangerous<\/em> did not start off well.\u00a0 On page ten, you find out that our heroine, Maisie, has one hand.\u00a0 She describes amniotic band syndrome as the reason for her lack of an arm, which is cool because no one usually knows what that is.\u00a0 But then she says, \u201cIt was my right arm\u2019s fault that I was into space.\u00a0 When I was old enough to dress myself, Dad replaced buttons on my clothes with Velcro, saying, \u2018Velcro \u2014 just like the astronauts.\u2019 I\u2019d wanted to know more, and a few library books later, I was a space geek.\u201d<\/p>\n I wish she would have said shoes.\u00a0 My parents bought me Velcro tennis shoes when I was a little kid, so I didn\u2019t have to worry about tying them.\u00a0 It took me a bit longer to learn to tie shoes than it did other kids because it was hard to get the shoes tied tightly enough with the kind of prosthetic arm I used.\u00a0 I did eventually get it, but it took some hacking.\u00a0 But buttons? \u00a0They really don\u2019t take two hands to do.\u00a0 Not even as a little kid.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an easy mistake to make though.\u00a0 Most two-handed people assume that if they do it with two hands, it must be done that way.\u00a0 I decided to let it slide.\u00a0 I rationalized that Maisie\u2019s parents wouldn\u2019t have known about one handed life any more than most people.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t be much of a stretch to think that they would try to make life easier for their daughter by replacing buttons on clothes with Velcro.\u00a0 I might argue that shoes would have been a more obvious choice, but I\u2019ll set aside my arguments and move on.<\/p>\n The story moves quickly \u2014 sometimes too quickly \u2014 and soon Maisie is on her way to astronaut camp.\u00a0 She\u2019s a little self conscious about her limb deficiency, but she isn\u2019t worried about her ability to do everything the other kids do.\u00a0 That\u2019s when I started feeling optimistic about the book.\u00a0 It\u2019s often hard for people to believe, but the biggest worry of my one handed life isn\u2019t how I\u2019m going to do something with one hand.\u00a0 It\u2019s wondering how people are going to respond to my one handedness.\u00a0 Will I have to prove myself?\u00a0 Will they not let me participate?\u00a0 Will they stare or ask questions? Will they acknowledge it at all?\u00a0 Especially as a young person, these social concerns were a much bigger deal than physical tasks.<\/p>\n When Maisie and her astronaut camp team gain super powers through some alien technology, the focus shifts away from any social concerns Maise might have to more pressing issues that propel that fast-moving plot ever forward.\u00a0 Her limb deficiency didn\u2019t come up that often as the story unfolded, but every time it did I found myself pleasantly surprised.\u00a0 Hale avoided falling into the main false assumptions about one-handed life: that everything will be so hard and that everything about a person who is different has to be serious.\u00a0 I loved that Maisie never needed help because of her limb deficiency.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t complain about it or not attempt to save the world because of it.\u00a0 She made jokes about it.\u00a0 She nicknamed her initial prosthetic device and the robot arm she eventually builds herself.\u00a0 That might not seem like a big deal, but it is.\u00a0 Those assumptions are ever-present in my life, and it is always a pleasant surprise when someone gets it.<\/p>\n There were occasional minor slip ups, like the Velcro thing at the beginning, throughout the novel.\u00a0 I would have loved more detail about her prosthetic arm, and I also wondered where her amputation began.\u00a0 It makes a pretty big difference in how you do things whether you have an elbow or a wrist.\u00a0 I was skeptical of Maisie\u2019s teammates casually referencing her limb deficiency so quickly since that isn\u2019t my experience.\u00a0 But these things seemed so unimportant considering what\u00a0Dangerous\u00a0<\/em>did right.<\/p>\n I really believed that Maisie was born without a hand. With the exception of the superpowers via alien technology thing, she might have been me. Kudos to Ms. Hale for doing her research and not allowing assumptions to write the story.<\/p>\n
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