In the second chapter of\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone<\/i>, I AM SCREAMING. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For talk of ableism related to autism and neuroatypical people, grief, coulrophobia\/fear of clowns, and suicide.\u00c2\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO SAY, I JUST WANT THIS REVIEW TO SAY\u00c2\u00a0I AM EXCITED\u00c2\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/i>IN BOLDED ALL CAPS AND MOVE ON BECAUSE THAT MEANS I GET MORE OF\u00c2\u00a0A WIZARD ALONE<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0SOONER RATHER LATER. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not fair, and I really want to do this justice. LET\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S TALK, COUSINS.<\/p>\n
Nita<\/b><\/p>\n
I feel so unprepared going back to the beginning of this chapter. I started off reading all of this with a completely different mindset. I was yelling about clowns! And how truly horrible they are! I felt sad for Nita, trapped in her grief over her mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death. Duane imbues the text with a tangible sense of loss, and as beautiful as the prose was, it also hit\u00c2\u00a0real<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0close to home. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one particular thing I wanted to touch on because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so rarely talked about: the denial. Your brain plays tricks on you when you lose someone. This past summer, I lost one of my very good friends to suicide. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been largely unable to deal with it, even though I went to his wake.<\/p>\n
No matter that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all the evidence in the world that he is gone, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe it. I keep going to his Facebook page to leave him comments about whatever new thing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve discovered or learned, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a moment there where I genuinely forget that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gone. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cruel, and I wish my brain would just move on, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. So this line struck me when I read it:<\/p>\n
It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take a wizard to figure out that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been\u00c2\u00a0afraid<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0to fall asleep, because of who he would, again and again,\u00c2\u00a0not<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0find beside him when he woke up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah. Real close to home.<\/p>\n
Darryl<\/b><\/p>\n
Look, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that I feel it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fair to rush through much of this chapter and what Duane reveals just so I can get to Darryl, but I TOTALLY WANT TO DO THIS. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help it, THIS IS SO UNEXPECTED AND SURPRISING AND I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT FOREVER. But the set-up is important, too! We get to see more of Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life in school, including his friend Raoul. It was nice to know he had friends other than Nita because it helped give me a portrait of what his\u00c2\u00a0whole<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0life looked like. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been missing in the past books because we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been so wrapped up in the lives of the Callahans. Which made sense! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re now getting the chance for Kit to get the same treatment, and I really, really love it.<\/p>\n
Plus, Duane writes Kit in a way that makes it clear that his thought process is not the same as Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, so the variance in narration works in her favor, too. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got a very analytical mind, and watching him tackle these problems is a lot of fun. Here, though, he works under a limited amount of time to secretly find Darryl, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m impressed with how he was able to pull that off. And yes, I love invisibility spells in fantasy books ANYWAY, so I was destined to love this before anything even happened.<\/p>\n
And then we meet Darryl, and I am already destroyed by this book in the\u00c2\u00a0second<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0chapter. A black wizard with autism. A BLACK WIZARD WITH AUTISM. I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T EVEN KNOW WHAT ELSE I NEED TO SAY BEYOND THAT. Except there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much to say about it! I am guessing that there might have been some editing done in the New Millennium edition of this book to update terms, but regardless, there is such an understanding and sympathy written into the text.<\/p>\n
Sympathy isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t everything, of course, and I hope the text moves beyond that because people with autism don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want others to feel\u00c2\u00a0sorry<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0for them; they just wanted to be treated with respect and love. However, in this context, I understood Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reaction. How could the Powers That Be give Darryl an Ordeal? How could they expect not to further traumatize him? What if his Ordeal made things\u00c2\u00a0worse<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0for him?<\/p>\n
And Duane addresses this by having Tom and Kit discuss Darryl WITH RESPECT. He is different, absolutely, and that difference matters in how Kit is to deal with Darryl. But they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do that thing that people do when faced with someone who thinks or believes or acts or loves differently than they do: they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make him feel like a mystical\u00c2\u00a0Other<\/i>. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a kid who has been given the chance to become a wizard, and they are both invested in helping Darryl achieve that goal without hurting him. They consciously think about that, too! How might their action, no matter how good-intentioned they are, cause irreparable harm in Darryl?<\/p>\n
Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Or it may not have been germane \u00e2\u20ac\u201c wizardry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hardly limited to the nuerotypical.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122VE NEVER EVEN SEEN THIS WORD IN A WORK OF FICTION, AND WITH THIS ONE LINE, DUANE OPENED UP HER ENTIRE UNIVERSE SO THAT NEUROATYPICAL PEOPLE COULD IMAGINE THEMSELVES AS WIZARDS. IT IS THAT SIMPLE,\u00c2\u00a0CAN YOU HEAR ME SCREAMING FROM MY HOUSE<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Duane manages to pack in a lot of information here \u00e2\u20ac\u201c some from Tom, some from Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s research on autistic people, some from Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conversation with his mother \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to help the reader understand why Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s journey into Darryl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind will be complicated. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk of existing trauma; of the way that Darryl may have built \u00e2\u20ac\u0153structures\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to deal with being so in tune to the world; of the fact that autism manifests in countless ways in countless people; of the fact that this complication is\u00c2\u00a0not a bad thing at all<\/i>. In the end, the message I got here was: treat Darryl with respect, and treat him as an individual. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t assume you know who he is, how he deals with trauma, how he deals with overstimulation, etc. Be kind. Open-minded.<\/p>\n
My gods, that is so incredible.<\/p>\n
One last note: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m super into YA novels with strong relationships between the protagonists and their parents. (So much so that I\u00c2\u00a0wrote<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0one.) Like with Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father in the last chapter, Duane shows us how Kit relates to his mother, particular when it comes to his wizardry. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot more suspicious than her husband, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good thing. Wizardry can be a scary thing to talk about, and while Kit understands this, he has to walk her through it more delicately than with her father. In the process, though, he is\u00c2\u00a0honest<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0with her, and I love that wizardry naturally leads to that. Honesty can only bring them closer.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=e2ZkC6vYt-o<\/p>\n
Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n
– I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards. I POST A LOT OF CUTE PHOTOS, OKAY. Think of it like a private Tumblr blog that only SPECIAL PEOPLE get to read.<\/b>
\n– I have updated my list of conventions and events for the remainder of the year and much of next year.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the second chapter of\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone, I AM SCREAMING. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[523,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-wizard-alone","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}