2006 - Vol. 3, Issue 4

Sparrows on Wheels (2004), Heidi Ganz, DocCrip Press, 250 pp.

When I first heard of Sparrows on Wheels, I was quite intrigued. I felt the novel had the potential to be groundbreaking. The story follows Tallia Taves, an aspiring writer who has severe cerebral palsy (CP), and her four disabled classmates through their life at Inglewood School Hospital, a segregated school for children with disabilities. This book is the only one I know of that deals with the complicated issues faced by kids in segregated schools. As a former student of such a school, I was excited to see how much of my own experience might be reflected in the text. A book that successfully tackled the unique issues faced by students with disabilities in a segregated environment would be a teaching tool I could share with many of my family members and friends. I waited impatiently for its arrival from Alberta, Canada, where author Heidi Ganz is based.

The design of the book itself is quite well done. The print is large and clean, and as a visually impaired reader I welcomed the double lines between paragraphs. At first glance, this book was promising.

The story begins on Talia Taves's first day of high school. Although she has been attending Inglewood School Hospital for some time, high school is a different ballgame. Talia and her classmates, Jo–Anne, Zachary, Alex, and Greg face problems with troublesome Inglewood staff, the issues surrounding mainstreaming, and their own mortality. Within the pages of Sparrows on Wheels, two of Talia's classmates, Zachary and Alex, die as a result of Muscular Dystrophy (MD). By the end of the book, the characters' senior year, it is clear that Greg, who also has MD, is dying as well. Mortality is an issue that is faced regularly by people with disabilities, often at an early age. However, the deaths of Talia's friends, Alex and Zachary, did not evoke any emotion in me, perhaps because the author leans so heavily on their mortality to move the plot. From the very beginning of the book, I had trouble differentiating among the three boys due to the similarity of their dialogue. Later, I felt that their deaths were used merely as speedbumps or transitions throughout the book.

Additionally, Ganz's decision to only include students with CP and MD compounds the problem of repetition in the book. Many problems faced by Talia and Jo–Anne, the two students with CP, are extremely similar, as are those of the three boys, who all have MD. Even varying the genders of the students — adding a boy with CP or a girl with MD — might have helped! This is certainly nothing like the composition of my segregated school. I wondered again and again at the author's choice to exclude children with spina bifida, thalidomide– and DES–related congenital disabilities, arthritis, chronic pain, autism, or other cognitive disabilities. In addition, all of her characters are wheelchair users. The existence of ambulatory Inglewood students is only hinted at a few times within the text. The cumulative result is that the children's problems are so similar that the text lacks complexity. I wanted to see much more texture and variety in the students' experiences. Did some of them not get along? Were they competitive? Were their parents competitive? Did they ever interact with able–bodied people? These are all examples of issues I faced again and again during my time at a school for people with disabilities.

While Sparrows on Wheels covers roughly four years, the book is nonetheless too narrow in scope. The story fails to represent the great diversity within the community of people with disabilities. I wanted to read more divergent perspectives and witness the problems faced by people with varying disabilities.

There's no denying Heidi Ganz's dedication to the story. She not only completed the manuscript, but began a small press, DocCrip Press, in order to see her book printed and brought to the world. But her prose is lacking in content and style, and the story did not hook me emotionally. While reading, I spent most of my time shaking my head, wishing the book had been better executed.

The lack of fiction containing characters with disabilities can often motivate us to fill the void. Unfortunately, enthusiasm to tell a story does not ensure that the story will emerge well written. If the work of people with disabilities is not treated with a critical eye, we will be left with disability fiction that is poorly written and soulless.