My Thirteenth Winter, Schneider Family Book Award Winner 2005

Perhaps you read the title of this post and thought, "Wait a minute. I thought you were blogging about Newbery Award Winners, what's this?" Well, technically it is an award winner. The Schneider Family Book Award is given to books that represent "an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences". You might not have heard of it, I believe the award was first given in 2004.
Anyway... I believe that this book should be required reading for anyone becoming a teacher, or, for that matter, just anyone interested in working with kids. I read this book quickly, soaking in Samantha's words and feelings. I do not have a learning disability, but I felt like I connected with Samantha Abeel on so many levels. I would read portions of text and think, "Finally! Someone who gets it!" For this reason I think it would also be an excellent reading choice in middle or high school classes.
Samantha Abeel is both gifted and an LD student. (That's Learning Disabled for those of you not in the education racket.) She was passed through the system for years because she was so bright, never disrupted class, and always tried very hard. When her mother finally decided that it wasn't worth her daughter's health and peace of mind to try to keep up with her classmates in math class, she requested that Samantha be put into a special education math program.
This book is full of thought-provoking statements about learning disabilities. I was frequently outraged by the adults in this memoir, I felt that many of them had failed Samantha in a way. She was tested in first grade and discovered deficient in math but gifted elsewhere. The school decided that she would be best off left in general education programs and that eventually it would even out.
Finally, in seventh grade, after years of being nervous about school and anything that required math to the point that she was ill, her mom fought to get her into special classes.
If you care to know what happens next, make sure to pick up this book! :)