SPACEMAN - Softcover

Cutler, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 059543701X ISBN 13: 9780595437016

Publisher: iUniverse, 2007

Synopsis

Gary has so many problems, it's hard to tell where one ends and the next begins. He can't seem to make friends, and no matter how hard he tries in school, he never catches up. He "spaces out" sometimes when things just seem too difficult. One day, while his brain is on a break, he accidentally hurts another student. After that, he is sent to a special school for students with learning disabilities. The very gifted teacher there and friends he makes help the Spaceman come back to Earth.

About this title

About the Author

San Francisco author Jane Cutler has written fifteen children?s books, aimed at audiences ranging from beginning readers to young adults. One picture book, Darcy and Gran Don?t Like Babies, is a Reading Rainbow selection and another, The Cello of Mr. O, has been performed as musical theater in Japan and in Canada. She is on the web at www.janecutler.com.

From Kirkus Reviews

Gary is a student with learning disabilities who is tormented by his classmates and berated by an unsympathetic teacher. He lives with his timid mother and dreads visits with his fitness-crazed father and stepmother. To escape from his problems he frequently spaces out, shutting out the world around him. When he is placed in a special class, the gifted teacher and understanding classmates help him deal with his problems. Cutler (Rats!, 1996, etc.) gets Gary's symptoms right and everything else wrong, as if she plucked his problems out of a textbook, with no understanding of the underlying pathology. Readers will believe Gary's behavior is the result of his conscious choices, rather than beyond his control. The one-dimensional characterizations of the secondary players (pushover mother, hard-driving and insensitive father, mean teacher, tough but gifted special-ed teacher, nasty ``normal'' classmates, kind and understanding special-ed students), combined with pat solutions, miraculous changes in characters, and negligent school practices, add up to a disservice to learning-disabled children and almost no real story. (Fiction. 9-13) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 059543701X
• ISBN 13: 9780595437016
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 146