Ariel Henley
Author of A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome
Works by Ariel Henley
Associated Works
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (2020) — Contributor — 607 copies
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- Works
- 1
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- 67
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- #256,179
- Rating
- 4.3
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- 2
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- 6
I generally enjoy this type of middle grade/teen (this one's more on the teen side) book for how they expose readers to lives that are very likely different from their own - and for how they represent other readers who can find themselves in their pages. This one, though, felt a little counterproductive on that front. I hesitate to criticize memoirs on any level, because I think their authors are a particular kind of brave and should be praised for having the stamina and courage to open up their lives to others in such a way. So I don't say this lightly and I'm also not claiming that there isn't value in the book in a lot of respects. It just didn't quite work for me overall. Henley seems to focus too heavily on her struggles for it to be an inspirational story; I was left wondering who this story was intended for. Also, the parallels Henley tries to draw between herself and Picasso are strained and in places trite, and in the end it reads like a forced comparison in a first year composition paper.… (more)