Author: Vanita Oelschlager
Publisher: Vanita Books
Rating: WARTY!
Illustrated by Joe Rossi.
Knees is a young children's book about dyslexia, an often misunderstood condition which affects how a child perceives the written word. It can cause problems other than the ability to read text, and so it’s important to understand the condition, and how it can be helped. Normally that would be sufficient for me to rate this book positively, but I had some issues with it as I’ll point out in this review. Having dyslexia does not meet the sufferer is dumb, or lazy and somehow deficient.
In this story, young Louis has dyslexia and finds it annoying, frustrating, and debilitating. This book looks at the different ways it can present itself, all seemingly aimed at tripping up Louis in his everyday school activities.
In the course of following Louis through his day, we learn to understand what's going on, and how to deal with it. It’s not the end of the world. It is an interesting way-station on his way through the world: a challenge to be met, tackled, and overcome, thereby building confidence not just in his ability to read, but also in his ability to successfully face challenges without giving up.
The most important thing Louis learns is that he's not alone - neither in his condition, nor in finding help for it. He also learns that many other people have experienced these same difficulties and overcome them. Some of these people are well-known, and may surprise you. Unfortunately I was not able to independently confirm that any of the people depicted in the sample images on my blog (Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, John F Kennedy, George Washington) actually were dyslexic. Wikipiedia doesn't mention either 'dyslexia' or 'dyslexic' on any of their pages, so I can't tell if it's merely an urban legend which the author is passing on, or if all four of them were, in fact, sufferers.
My biggest disappointment was in the conclusion which the book drew, which seemed to me to be poorly arrived at. It seems to suggest that although he was not academically outstanding, Louis could excel at sports, namely basketball. That seemed to me to be entirely the wrong way to go in this particular book.
Not that there's a problem with sports! Exercise is, after all, vitally important and does more than keep your muscles toned. It can also help brain function, which certainly wouldn’t harm someone in Louis's situation, but in a way it felt like a cop-out - like poor Louis was being told that since he was struggling with academic work, take the easy way out and play a sport. Maybe you'll get a scholarship. I'm sure this isn't what the author intended, but it's still there.
It’s for this reason that I can’t recommend this particular one. Maybe you'll see it differently, and I confess that I was torn about how to rate this. For me, though, playing the basketball card felt like too much of a cop-out, and it seemed to contradict what had come before.
By all means, if a child is good at a sport, let them go for it, but education is and should be primarily about academic excellence. Tossing sport into the pot in this way seemed to create a dichotomy - like it's one or the other. It isn’t, and many athletes have handsomely demonstrated this by demonstrating academic achievement, as have many academics in showing sporting success.
I'm glad that sports was mentioned, but saddened that it seemed like this was offered rather like it was Louis's ticket to success, which meant his academic performance wasn't so important after all. I tend to rate children's books positively because the ones I choose to read and review offer something to be thrilled with, but I can’t do that in this case because I felt it sends the wrong message - or at least risks sending the wrong one. You are welcome to disagree!
