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A review by avalinahsbooks
My Heart Can't Even Believe It: A Story of Science, Love, and Down Syndrome by Amy Silverman
5.0
This is a wonderful book, and it's very hard to sum it up. I've always been curious about people's lives if they have disabilities, especially intelectual ones, so reading an actual first-hand experience memoir on it was wonderful. Especially because I've recently read a book about a patient with Alzheimer's, and DS is quite connected to Alzheimer's, as it turns out.
You could say I was glued to the book for the two or three days I was reading it. God, I even went to a bubble bath with the kindle in a plastic bag, that's how much I couldn't let it go. The memoir is both factually accurate, not overdone with emotion (because the author is a journalist), but at the same time gripping and warming, it just makes you root for the little girl named Sophie. As of the very beginning it seems that we are dealing with a high-functioning girl with DS, because throughout the whole book from the start even I as a reader had much more confidence in Sophie's abilities than the author herself (the mother). Sophie seems to be an incredibly smart girl as a person suffering from DS, and it only goes to show you that with disabilities like that - you get what you put in. And Sophie was incredibly lucky to have parents as wonderful as she did. To be honest, I think Sophie had a better childhood than a lot of us. It certainly sounds like she had a better time at school than I did - and she owes it all to the wonderful people around her, especially her parents and teachers.
Books like this should be read widely, I will go as far as saying they should be on school reading lists - we need to educate society about people with disabilities, bridging the gap about "how different" they are and showing that they are more LIKE us, rather than unlike us. And I think this book does show this very well. This book made me want to meet Sophie, or meet other people like her, to get to know them. If you are curious about this subject, you should definitely read this book, and let your teens read it. Even if you just stumbled upon it and know nothing of the subject - go ahead and read it. We should all know more about this.
You could say I was glued to the book for the two or three days I was reading it. God, I even went to a bubble bath with the kindle in a plastic bag, that's how much I couldn't let it go. The memoir is both factually accurate, not overdone with emotion (because the author is a journalist), but at the same time gripping and warming, it just makes you root for the little girl named Sophie. As of the very beginning it seems that we are dealing with a high-functioning girl with DS, because throughout the whole book from the start even I as a reader had much more confidence in Sophie's abilities than the author herself (the mother). Sophie seems to be an incredibly smart girl as a person suffering from DS, and it only goes to show you that with disabilities like that - you get what you put in. And Sophie was incredibly lucky to have parents as wonderful as she did. To be honest, I think Sophie had a better childhood than a lot of us. It certainly sounds like she had a better time at school than I did - and she owes it all to the wonderful people around her, especially her parents and teachers.
Books like this should be read widely, I will go as far as saying they should be on school reading lists - we need to educate society about people with disabilities, bridging the gap about "how different" they are and showing that they are more LIKE us, rather than unlike us. And I think this book does show this very well. This book made me want to meet Sophie, or meet other people like her, to get to know them. If you are curious about this subject, you should definitely read this book, and let your teens read it. Even if you just stumbled upon it and know nothing of the subject - go ahead and read it. We should all know more about this.