Life as Jamie Knows It: new from Michael Bérubé

A new book from Michael Bérubé is cause for celebration, and this one, released just a week ago at the beginning of Down Syndrome Awareness Month is very welcome:

Life as Jamie Knows It - An Exceptional Child Grows Up
Michael Bérubé, Beacon Press, October 2016

The story of Jamie Bérubé’s journey to adulthood and a meditation on disability in American life

Published in 1996, Life as We Know It introduced Jamie Bérubé to the world as a sweet, bright, gregarious little boy who loves the Beatles, pizza, and making lists. When he is asked in his preschool class what he would like to be when he grows up, he responds with one word: big. At four, he is like many kids his age, but his Down syndrome prevents most people from seeing him as anything but disabled. 

Twenty years later, Jamie is no longer little, though he still jams to the Beatles, eats pizza, and makes endless lists of everything—from the sixty-seven counties of Pennsylvania (in alphabetical order, from memory) to the various opponents of the wrestler known as the Undertaker ...

This excerpt  published in Raw Story will whet your appetite for the whole, and might address a significant question for your own family:

How a committed agnostic learned to embrace ‘spirituality’ to explain life and death to his exceptional intellectually disabled child

Michael Bérubé, Raw Story, 9 October 2016

... To that point in his life, Jamie had never experienced the death of a family member. Then, too, there is the fact that I do not often speak or think of our “spiritual” development ... But this was a form of “spiritual” development I recognized, and I immediately regretted not being more aware of Jamie’s possible needs in this respect ...

Life as Jamie Knows It - An Exceptional Child Grows Up is available in print, on Kindle, and as an audio book.

• Links to other books and articles by Michael Bérubé can be found in several posts here and here