This was one of our obligatory high school reads. My best friend's mother was crippled with polio and during the 60's in Sydney you would still see kids in primary schools in calipers. An inspiring book. ( )

Alan Marshall contracted polio as a young child. What he also had was excellent observational skills and the ability to put this down on paper. In this first boy in a series of three he tells of growing up in a small town in the countryside in Victoria. He relies on his father and a few other adults as role models who instilled in him independence, and an attitude that there was nothing wrong with him; he was just as different from others as two other people are different from each other.
The book gives a great picture of the tough life that people in rural Australia endured in the 1920s. ( )

I read this when I was quite young, and revisited it again recently.

What an inspiring and well-written story!

Life was so different in those times. The chances of a young boy with such a physical challenge being allowed to grow and develop without constraints are almost unimaginable these days. I can't help but think the changes are not for the better. ( )