Most of Petey centers around the titular character, who suffers from cerebral palsy, and the people who enter his life only to abandon him a couple chapters later. His words are clumsy and pedestrian, his characters are paper dolls, his pacing is non-existent, and his sense of plot is amateur at best. I have to say I enjoyed it immensely, and I'm so grateful for a good teacher who wants to teach her class compassion and looking at people's hearts.not just the outer shell.īen Mikaelsen does not possess the talent to be writing a book about cerebral palsy. I read the book in a day and a half, my son asking my constantly, "How do you like it, Mom?" I rejoiced as he made small advances, and I wished with all my heart that he had been born in a different time where he could have gotten the help and therapy he needed. I cried as Petey tried to reach out from his bodily prison, trying to show the people around him he wasn't really an "idiot". I cried as Petey's mother, who had done everything she could for her son, put him on a train and into the State's care. Technically, it wasn't a difficult book to read, but it was hard. One day while we were in the library, he insisted that we check the book out so I could read it too. And then, luckily, they got to have a phone interview with the author! As he learned more about the back story of Petey from the author, he came to love the book even more. My 4th grade son's class read this together.
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