[CALIBK12] Target: Books on persons with disabilities

[Suzannah Barbour]

Mikaelsen, Ben. Petey

School Library Journal: Gr 7 Up-This ambitious book succeeds on a number of levels. It is based on a true, tragic situation in which Petey, born with cerebral palsy in 1920, is misdiagnosed as mentally retarded. Unable to care for him at home, his
parents relinquish him to the care of the state, where he languishes in a mental institution for the next five decades. Step by institutional step, readers see how this tragedy could happen. More importantly, readers feel Petey's pain, boredom, hope,
fear, and occasional joy. A handful of people grow to know and love him over the course of his long and mostly difficult life, but few are able to effect much change. In 1977, statewide reorganization and a new, correct diagnosis result in Petey being
moved to a local nursing home. There, the final, triumphant chapters of his life are entwined with an eighth-grade student named Trevor, who finds his own life transformed by love and caring in ways he never could have imagined. Mikaelsen successfully
conveys Petey's strangled attempts to communicate. He captures the slow passage of time, the historical landscape encompassed. He brings emotions to the surface and tears to readers' eyes as time and again Petey suffers the loss of friends he has grown
to love. Yet, this book is much more than a tearjerker. Its messages-that all people deserve respect; that one person can make a difference; that changing times require new attitudes-transcend simplistic labels. Give this book to anyone who has ever
shouted "retard" at another. Give it to any student who "has" to do community service. Give it to anyone who needs a good book to read.-Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Jr. High School, Iowa City, IA

Booklist: Gr. 7-10. There are really two stories here: in the first, a little boy named Petey, born in 1905 with cerebral palsy, is misdiagnosed as an idiot, and his parents reluctantly institutionalize him. Even though he cannot make himself understood
easily, he becomes attached to caregivers and another inmate. He grows up with a sharp intelligence and a desire for human things: affection, touch, the feel of the outside air. He is moved to another institution as an old man (the story leaps decades
between some chapters) and loses touch with all those he cared about. In the second half, a young teen named Trevor, almost against his will, befriends Petey when he saves Petey from a snowball attack by local riffraff in Bozeman, Montana. Trevor
engineers Petey's reunion with an old buddy, gets him a new wheelchair, and, in a four-hanky climax, calls him Grandpa and inspires his distant and estranged parents. Although Petey is a cross between angel and saint, and none of the characters is any
more than two-dimensional, there's a real strength here in the depiction of the person inside a disability and the dignity that is a divine right, even for the old or feeble. (Reviewed November 1, 1998)GraceAnne A. DeCandido.

Suzannah Barbour
Ross School
K-8 Librarian
P0 Box 1058
Ross, CA  949457


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