Book Review #3: "Reaching for Sun"

Zimmer, Tracie Vaughn. Reaching for Sun. New York, NY: Bloomsbury U.S.A Children's Books, 2007.

Reaching for Sun is a story written in poetry verses about a young girl named Josie. Josie allows readers to step into her personal thoughts about her life and her disability, cerebral palsy. Readers are taken through Josie's maturation process as she falls in love, deals with the "popular kids" in school, and stands up to her mother for the first time, as she travels through a year of personal growth, self acceptance, and confidence in a brighter future.

This book is very deep and personal, and shows the emotional side of living with cerebral palsy. The book is made up of a series of poems that tell this story, which helps readers connect with Josie on a more personal level. The poems serve as a way into her thoughts and feelings, and readers get to see just how she feels and what she is thinking through each experience.
The author uses a plant metaphor to mirror Josie's disability. I thought that this was a great way to make it a little easier for young readers to understand. The metaphor painted more of a tangible picture for children that they could refer back to throughout the book. In the poem titled "like me," Josie says:
"But this spring
half the branches wear no leaves,
claimed by disease or insects.
So the bulldozers tear it from the soil
with their terrible teeth
and splatter the leaves and limbs
like garbage.

Why can't they see
that half still blooms-
like me?
(Zimmer, 82)
I thought that this way a great way of saying that just because someone has a physical limitation does not mean that you should ignore the rest of them. Just because a person cannot move as well as others does not mean that they are broken and that they should be discarded completely.

Josie's newfound friend, Jordan, is a great model of an accepting friend. In the poem titled "the question," Jordan comes right out and asks questions like, "You have cerebral palsy, don't you?" and "How did you get it?" and "What's the hardest part?" When Josie answers that last question by saying, "Everyone thinking I'm retarded," Jordan responds with,
"But Josie,
you know tons of stuff! Anybody
who talks to you at school knows that.
(Zimmer 74-750)
People who have any disability don't necessarily want people to ignore it or pretend that it doesn't exist. Jordan shows readers that it's okay to ask questions, as long as they're appropriate, and take an interest in every aspect of their lives, even their disability. That is what builds a strong friendship.
I will include this book in my classroom library. I thought that it was honest, real, entertaining, full of heart, and inspirational.

The author of Reaching for Sun, Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, started off her teaching career in special education. She has worked with high school students with autism and middle school students with learning and developmental disabilities. Zimmer got the idea for this book when she was a special education teacher working with students with multiple disabilities. In an interview about Reaching for Sun, she says, "Many of my students didn't realize they were different; they were kind of blessedly unaware. But I had a few students, like Josie, who knew they were on the outside of everything. These bright kids were stuck in bodies they felt betrayed them. I witnessed their daily courage and grace. I wanted to honor them in a story."
Tracie Vaughn Zimmer's homepage