Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
“What makes this journey so inspiring is Mooney’s transcendent humor; the self he has become does not turn away from old pain but can laugh at it, make fun of it, make it into something beautiful.”—Los Angeles Times
Labeled “dyslexic and profoundly learning disabled,” Jonathan Mooney was a short-bus rider—a derogatory term used for kids in special education. To learn how others had moved beyond labels, he bought his own short bus and set out cross-country, looking for kids who had dreamed up magical, beautiful ways to overcome the obstacles that separated them from the so-called normal world.
The Short Bus is his irreverent and poignant record of that odyssey, meeting thirteen people in thirteen states who taught Mooney that there’s no such thing as normal—and that to really live, every person must find their own special way of keeping on. The Short Bus is a unique gem, propelled by Mooney’s heart, humor, and outrageous rebellions.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Great Deal
Customer Rating:
Great book for teachers and parents of special needs students. Actually maybe it is the general ed. teachers who need to read it. It gives you a very special view of what those kids face everyday and hopefully helps you see beyond the disability to the heart of the individual!
Learning with laughter and tears
Customer Rating:
This book was a requirement for a graduate course I took on learning disabilities. The teacher had a copy on hand for us to thumb through the first day of class. After just reading a couple of paragraphs here and there I couldn't let it go. I had to borrow the book that night and devoured it immediately. I bought a copy anyway because I think that all adults who consider themselves educated could benefit from Mooney's writing. I learned more in this text than I had in dozens of expensive textbooks. My copy is worn from being lent out to friends, colleagues, and family.
Mooney does not simply teach the symptoms of disability. He teaches interaction, empathy, and most of all that as with all things a sense of humor is a must. I appreciated his tone and found comfort in the idea that while things can seem heartbreaking, it is always okay to laugh. I am beginning my journey in the field of special education. When finding my interactions with students awkward and scary, I can open this book to nearly any section and find insight and support. The people that Mooney discovers on his path are what makes our world colorful, imaginative, and fun.
This book is a must have for any educator, family of a person battling with "normal", or anyone that considers himself a well rounded human being. Buy it! You'll be better off because of it.
Two Journeys
Customer Rating:
This book is about Jonathan's two journeys, a trip across the U.S. in a modified special ed bus and the story of his childhood as a kid with different learning needs. He's a gifted writer whose only indication of learning difficulties is in the story.
The story is heart wrenching. He meets with people of many different learning issues, at different stages in their quest to find their place in society. I particularly find inspiring his realization that he was hiding in society as a jock because he didn't believe he was capable of being a scholar. Ultimately, he finds his way.
He's a terrific role model. I have sent books to two friends with dyslexic family members (parent and child).
Okay, but Only Okay (A special educator's take)
Customer Rating:
I have finished reading Jonathan Mooney's "Short Bus" and also several reviews of the book. I thought the book was okay - no more or less than okay. The concept - a former "sped" kid buys a "short bus" and travels the country talking to people of various disability - is interesting, but the execution was somewhat pedestrian and, as another reviewer noted, somewhat whiny.
The overall "message" (or theme) of the book is that people with disabilities have (rather than are) disabilities. There is, it's true, a certain inadvertent tendency in most of us to reduce people to their disability. Moody interweaves his own story of a dissatisfactory youth (he is ADD but was labeled stupid) with others' similar struggles: several parents of children he met on his journey were engaged in lawsuits against their child's school.
But Moody often takes a worthy idea too far, in suggesting, as he often does, that disability is more a social construction than a biological reality, and often gets quite "whiny" about this. He frequently lambasts those who try to "fix the disabled," such as believers in Cochlear implants for the deaf. (In a contradiction, he also chastizes teachers who don't recognize and accomodate for disabilities like ADHD, leaving us to wonder if we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't.)
Meeting the "characters" - an ADHD artist, a blind/deaf girl, a student with cerebral palsy confined to a wheelchair, etc - was interesting, but I never felt like I "got to know" any of them. In an irony, Moody's intent of letting us "get to know" the people behind the disaiblities backfires, because in the end, I felt like the only thing I DID get to know were their disabilities. The encounters were brief (one lasting only two pages) and Moody's "discussions" with the students were never really illuminating.
In the end, the saving grace of the book was the strong narrative and "story line" of it. Moody had an interesting concept and, while it never really delivered much of what was promised, it was interesting in its own right.
As a special educator, I am glad to see books like this (and films like "Autism: the Musical"), but really wished for a bit more insight into the "characters" and a bit less whiny preaching about the injustice of being disabled.
The Short Bus
Customer Rating:
As a teacher for learning disabled students, I was interested in the view from a student who has been through the "system" of school. I wanted to read more about that.
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