The invention of Shawn is compelling, evoking one of our darkest fears and deepest hopes — that a fully conscious and intelligent being may be hidden within such a broken body, as yet unable to declare his existence.

First-time novelist Trueman raises ethical issues about euthanasia through the relationship between 14-year-old Shawn McDaniel, who suffers from cerebral palsy, and his father. In a conversational tone, narrator Shawn explains that when he was born, a tiny blood vessel burst in his brain, leaving him unable to control any of his muscles. What no one knows is that Shawn is a "secret genius" who, while unable to communicate, remembers everything he has ever heard. His condition, which includes violent seizures, overwhelmed his father, who moved out when Shawn was three years old; the man later won a Pulitzer Prize for a poem based on his experiences as parent to a victim of C.P. Weaving together memories with present-day accounts, Shawn describes the highs and lows of his day-to-day life as well as his father's increasing fascination with euthanasia and evidence that the man is working up the courage to personally "end [Shawn's] pain." The strength of the novel lies in the father-son dynamic; the delicate scenes between them carefully illustrate their mutual quest to understand each other. The other characters (Shawn's brother and sister, mother, teachers) lack this complexity. As a result, many of the scenes feel more contrived than heartfelt ("I always feel so guilty complaining about it at all!" says his sister). All in all, the book's concepts are more compelling than the story line itself. Ages 10-up. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Gr 5-9-Shawn McDaniel has cerebral palsy. With no control of physical functions, he appears to the outside world, including his family, to be hopelessly retarded-a "vegetable." Because he narrates the story, readers know that he is, in fact, a near genius, completely aware of his surroundings, and able to remember everything he has ever heard. He has a rich inner life, full of humor and insight, and is capable of the most normal feelings of a 14-year-old boy. Most of his day is spent in a wheelchair where he is attended to by his mother and older siblings. His father, an author and celebrity on the talk-show circuit, left the family because of Shawn and his problems, but maintains a relationship with him. Shawn suspects that his father, in order to end his perceived pain and suffering, is considering killing him. With this intriguing premise, Trueman presents readers with thought-provoking issues. The character of Shawn, compassionately drawn, will challenge them to look beyond people's surfaces. His struggle to be known, and ultimately loved, is vividly captured, and the issue of euthanasia is handled boldly but sensitively. In the final scene, Shawn, alone with his father, waits vulnerably as the man struggles with his options. Readers must draw their own conclusions as his father's dilemma is left unresolved. This story is bound to spark much lively discussion.-Tim Rausch, Crescent View Middle School, Sandy, UT Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

A teenager with profound cerebral palsy, who is utterly unable to give even those who know him best the faintest sign that he is sentient, narrates this devastating family portrait-cum-moral conundrum. Inside Shawn's twitching, drooling, seizure-racked body is a sane, intelligent teenager with an eidetic memory. A sympathetic observer of the effect his presence has on everyone around him, he leads a relatively rich, if vicarious, inner life. It is fueled by dreams (or perhaps more than dreams) of flight, total recall of everything he has ever seen or heard, and feelings as intense as anyone's: love, amusement, bemusement, frustration—and anxiety. He overhears comments about "ending his pain," from his doting, tormented father Sydney—who has begun research for a biography of a man convicted of smothering a profoundly disabled child. Trueman has a son with CP, and has obviously drawn in part from that experience, both for the story's events and for the issues he raises involving the social and emotional costs of caring for the physically helpless. Thematically, the story is built around Sydney's dilemma as he desperately searches for reasons not to end his son's life, and finds many seductive, compelling arguments otherwise; the abrupt, ambiguous ending leaves him on the verge of killing Shawn, or not, and so transmits his inner debate to readers. Though character is not the author's strongest concern here, like the similarly lucid brain-damaged teen in Joan Leslie Woodruff's The Shiloh Renewal (1999), Shawn will stay with readers, not for what he does, but for what he is and has made of himself. (Fiction. 12 )

Imagine not being able to control a single movement of your body. This is life for Shawn, who has cerebral palsy. Most treat him like a vegetable, except for Shawn's dad, a poet, who is sensitive enough to intuit there is more to Shawn than meets the eye. The problem is that Shawn thinks his dad is going to kill him because of it--to release his son from this mortal coil and end his suffering, so to speak. Using the first-person narrative to his advantage, Johnny Heller adeptly voices the frustration Shawn feels at being incapable of communicating while expressing many of the same thoughts, feelings, and fears the average teenager has. Heller convincingly switches between the wry observant voice of 14-year-old Shawn to the emotionally charged voice of Shawn's divorced father, who feels a mixture of shame, guilt, and responsibility for Shawn's future--one they are both unsure of even to the final sentence. M.M.O. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine