She takes a while to tell him about her condition, out of shame-which I’ve never felt, but, then again, I’m a different person. He notices, and performs charming, adorable pantomime theater for her. Maddy’s world is turned upside-down by the arrival of the handsome boy next door, Olly. She doesn’t really seem to have a life plan for a from-home career, though, which is what gave me my first inklings that something was off. She doesn’t just generically like to read, she writes clever little reviews of the books she’s reading. And like me, she attends school online (high school vs. I at first felt a lot of sympathy for Maddy, spending most of her time inside in a controlled environment, carefully checking for allergens. I have to read ingredient labels carefully, wear a filtration mask out in public, and keep a comprehensive list of medication allergies on my person at all times, as well as two EpiPens and a bottle of liquid Benadryl. I myself suffer from severe allergies-one anaphylactic airborne allergy, three anaphylactic ingestion allergies, two ingestion allergies which cause swelling of the face and tongue (currently considered “severe,” may upgrade to anaphylactic if exposed again), two mild airborne allergies, and one ingestion allergy of currently unknown severity. So, I do understand having to be very, very careful in new environments, while Maddy avoids that problem by never going past her front door.

The most common treatment at this time is a bone marrow transplant, with “bubbles” of filtered air, sterilization procedures, and isolation being common before donors can be matched. SCID stands for Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, a genetic defect of the T- and B-lymphocyte systems that leaves the sufferer extremely susceptible to infectious disease and allergens. And the answer to that is a thudding “No.”įor my credentials, I do not suffer from SCID, like the book’s protagonist Maddy does.

I’m reviewing it from a lens of whether it was a positive, realistic portrayal of disability. While books portraying the struggles of biracial characters are important, sometimes it’s nice to read about a character whose heritage isn’t glossed over, but is also not the main focus of the narrative.īut I’m not reviewing the book from the lens of whether the book was an enjoyable read or the characters were likable or even whether it was a positive portrayal of a biracial protagonist. It portrayed a biracial heroine whose race is incidental-her parents were just nice people who met, fell in love, married, and had children, though her father and brother were tragically killed when she was just a baby. It portrayed likable people being likable among nice illustrations and some clever framing devices like school assignments on kissing.

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