Short Bus by Jonathon Mooney, Book Review Example

Becky left for graduate school and the narrator was already beginning to miss her lovely presence. As the author passed through Graceland at Margaret’s Grocery he felt a bit uncomfortable as it hit home as his chest started to tighten-he felt out of control. His disability came to light again and he wanted to get out of there. His biggest fear was that someone would pop out and say, “Hey you, hey freak!” He turned to Becky for confirmation that he was normal in a negative sense by asking, “Do you want to marry a freak like me?”

Mooney takes note that two people in Virginia are wrongly labelled as disabled rather should be labelled as “screwed by culture.”(Mooney, 2007). He comments on the emotional baggage that police carry but they are not labelled as disabled. Deborah was a police officer who was looking to raise a disabled child. She wanted baby Ashley who was born from an alcoholic mother. She wanted to be able to provide for a disabled child not an emotionally challenged child. The author did not want Deborah to notice he was staring at Ashley for he did not see Ashley as a whole but parts. The pain of rejection and inferior thought are the most painful that a mother and daughter can experience and Mooney thought that was the whole issue to Ashley’s problems. The mother was not able to understand the differences in Ashley of why she acted out in Church and why she was different than the other normal children. Mooney was there to help her understand the concept of making a disabled child feel normal and it started with the mother-child relationship.

References

Mooney, J. (2007) The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal Retrieved October 22, 2009 from, http://books.google.com/books?id=90tWLQUcZuIC&dq=the+short+bus+by+jonathan+mooney&source=gbs_navlinks_s