A Kind of Spark

Product Information

This is just such a poignant story for our time about acceptance and support and how we can lift others up instead of tearing them down. McNicoll, who is autistic herself, wasn’t looking for a book deal when she first met Knights Of; she was offering her services as a proofreader for books that involved disability.

A school history project about witch trials turns into a bit of a crusade for Addie as she identifies with the women who were unjustly targeted for being different.Hugs, eye contact, and certain textures are hard to tolerate, and she can’t always understand people’s expressions.

Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. The Illegible: Thanks to her motor control problems, Addie has poor handwriting, which results in her teacher Miss Murphy ripping up her story, throwing it away, and screaming at her for writing "lazily. Konu otistik bir kızın ailesi, okulu ve öğretmenleri ile ilişkisi, ve yüzyıllar önce İrlanda'da cadı yakan güruhun aslında bugün farklılıkları görmezden gelen, anlamaya çalışmayan, yadırgayan ve dışlayan insanlarla aynı olduğuydu.The story follows Addie, a young autistic girl, who campaigns for a memorial to the witch trials in her village. Addie's other older teen sister Nina is neurotypical, which is confusing to Addie, but Nina protects her and advocates for her. When she isn't writing fiction, she works as an editor and in her spare time, makes colourful chokers for friends to wear.

Readers, particularly neurotypical ones, are forced to question themselves over their own preconceived notions, poor assumptions, and if not outright cruelty than at least a sense of Have I always done right by people I've known who were struggling to live in a world that deems their lives disposable? Addie is autistic, has a supportive family, a clear sense of her own identity and is alert to injustice. I've already read this book twice, because I found it somewhat hard to read at first and wanted to give myself the opportunity to really let it sink in and to form an actual opinion on it.Though the story wastes no time getting its point across, it's well-written enough to leave readers wishing there were a few more chapters. Seeing how much she took the story of the women persecuted during the witch trials to heart made so much sense, not just because she saw her own story in theirs, but because the notion of such injustice was blindingly obviously wrong to her, and she knew that her role here was to do whatever she could to make others see it, too. Want haar juf heeft net haar verhaal verscheurd en in de prullenbak gegooid, omdat ze Addie’s handschrift niet kon lezen en omdat Addie op haar leeftijd beter moet weten.