I desperately want to read this book now, but I, too, shall be furious at it by the end. I have so much anger and sadness for books that are full of promise and then go do and something like this!
Ouch. I see your point, and it would piss me off, too. Miracle cures always feel like a cheap trick after a character has struggled to define themselves in their own terms and find a way to achieve their goals in spite of physical difficulties. It makes things feel hollow, somehow.
I never found it to be such a problem with "crippled" Colin in the Secret Garden, because the reader should twig fairly early on that he's not physically crippled; he's been told that he is, and has therefore never learned to try. I find it a different message, and what I took from that as a kid was that, if something you wanted to do was really difficult, you should persist and work hard at it; and that the expectations of other people can really limit you or empower you - which is a perfectly fine message; I missed the "if you turn into an awesome person you will be able to do everything easily," message, which seems to come out more in the book you have just reviewed here.
I'm now undecided as to whether I should read this book...
Ah, see, I was putting Collin into the framework (that Goodman updated) of: "brave-good-befriended-kind-and-then-better" because, psycholigivally, he did have to learn to be/become all these things in order to be 'uncrippled'. In this sense, the physicality of the disability doesn't actually mattered. He was becoming what he was told he was, when he was weak-angry-brat Collin, and then became what Mary/the now positive environment told him he was: ie. free to run about the place and be a 'whole' child. Does that make sense?
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I desperately want to read this book now, but I, too, shall be furious at it by the end. I have so much anger and sadness for books that are full of promise and then go do and something like this!
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I never found it to be such a problem with "crippled" Colin in the Secret Garden, because the reader should twig fairly early on that he's not physically crippled; he's been told that he is, and has therefore never learned to try. I find it a different message, and what I took from that as a kid was that, if something you wanted to do was really difficult, you should persist and work hard at it; and that the expectations of other people can really limit you or empower you - which is a perfectly fine message; I missed the "if you turn into an awesome person you will be able to do everything easily," message, which seems to come out more in the book you have just reviewed here.
I'm now undecided as to whether I should read this book...
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Ah, see, I was putting Collin into the framework (that Goodman updated) of: "brave-good-befriended-kind-and-then-better" because, psycholigivally, he did have to learn to be/become all these things in order to be 'uncrippled'. In this sense, the physicality of the disability doesn't actually mattered. He was becoming what he was told he was, when he was weak-angry-brat Collin, and then became what Mary/the now positive environment told him he was: ie. free to run about the place and be a 'whole' child. Does that make sense?
Regardless--thanks for reading! Means a lot.
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