Eolith reviewed I Can Jump Puddles by Alan Marshall
An old friend revisited
5 stars
When I was about 11 or so, I read I Can Jump Puddles, and it was life changing. As a child with a disability acquired at about the same age as Alan, into a similar family - father highly skilled worker, mother parents working as a team, a rural family in a landscape that was being transformed (on the other side of the world) it was the book I needed then. I returned to it because someone on Mastadon said there weren't enough reviews here of Australian books. And this was the only one of those I'd read that I could easily find as an e-book. Re-reading books from your childhood always runs the risk of reading attitudes and actions that are, now, upsetting. There is one word used of Aboriginal children which is offensive, but the harm done to Aboriginal people, to the landscape are portrayed sympathetically. Like the …
When I was about 11 or so, I read I Can Jump Puddles, and it was life changing. As a child with a disability acquired at about the same age as Alan, into a similar family - father highly skilled worker, mother parents working as a team, a rural family in a landscape that was being transformed (on the other side of the world) it was the book I needed then. I returned to it because someone on Mastadon said there weren't enough reviews here of Australian books. And this was the only one of those I'd read that I could easily find as an e-book. Re-reading books from your childhood always runs the risk of reading attitudes and actions that are, now, upsetting. There is one word used of Aboriginal children which is offensive, but the harm done to Aboriginal people, to the landscape are portrayed sympathetically. Like the poverty and alcoholism of many of the settlers, and the effects of over-work and disease, the narrator treats all with respect and concern of a thoughtful child, and the insight of an adult writing for young people. I had thought of "I can jump puddles as a book that shaped my life by showing me a way of thinking about disability that I adopted. But I now realise that many of my other responses to the world were provoked or nurtured by Allan's observations.