Review of "My Brother Sammy"

Book Title: My Brother Sammy     

Book Author: Becky Edwards and David Armitage

Year Published: 1999                                            

Reviewer’s Name: Deanna Giardino

1. Summarize

The main character explains his many feelings about his relationship with his brother, Sammy, who is on the autism spectrum. The story begins with describing problems in the relationship, reaches a peak when the main character describes angry emotions, then concludes with a resolution of understanding that the main character has about his brother.

2. Issues related to accessibility

The text is a medium size in a serif font. The text is in black over colorful watercolor-style backgrounds, which provides an okay amount of contrast. The text reads left to right in a straight horizontal line with good spacing between words and lines of text.

The images have strong coloration and contrast overall, though the characters do not have strong contrast with the background and it may be difficult to visually separate foreground from background. The text tells the story and the images compliment the story, so the storyline may be understood from text alone if the child has difficulty seeing the images clearly.

There are a limited number of characters and the storyline is clear. A distinctive and repetitive sentence structure is used to contrast with the storyline of changing emotions and engage readers. This distinctive sentence structure may confuse some readers, but may be beneficial to other readers.

The pages are a sturdy but thin paper with low gloss. The book is 25 pages. This copy has a hardcover.

3. Characters

The character with a disability is a supporting role who does not speak, except through a narrator. This character’s disability does prevent him from communicating, except for repeating a few phrases the main character says, so this may be a key part of the story instead of an oversight from the author.

The character with autism has an active role in the story’s resolution, and the solution for the story’s problem is very inclusive. There is some “you/them” language that is resolved by the end of the book. The portrayal of characters seems to be accurate and not stereotypical. However, the brother with autism does not show growth in the story. He is used to facilitate the growth of the main character, so the main character can learn to value his brother’s unique way of interacting with the world.

The story’s purpose does seem to be to teach children without disabilities who have a sibling with a disability about how to better interact with that sibling, which could be a problematic approach. The redeeming aspect is that the book encourages children without disabilities to step out of their comfort zone and put more effort into understanding and bonding with their siblings, which is a realistic problem for many siblings.

4. Adaptations

The reader could describe what the characters are doing in the images so that children listening can benefit from hearing both the text and images narrated, since the images could be difficult to visually understand. A discussion about healthy sibling relationships is encouraged after reading this story to a child.

5. Conclusions

This book could help children who have siblings with disabilities communicate their emotions.