Book Review: “I Can Jump Puddles” by Alan Marshall
A cry of defiance against the social model of disability
As a person who identifies as proudly disabled, my reading is quite diverse — and as a school librarian, my aim is to build a collection that represents our school body. I have strong beliefs that every child should see themselves accurately represented in literature.
I read many of the books I purchase for the school library. Currently, I’m working on expanding the books that accurately represented chronic illness and disability. So I decided to revisit I Can Jump Puddles.
I first read I Can Jump Puddles in my childhood, but if asked, I couldn’t honestly tell you what it was about other than the autobiography of a child who had survived polio.
My first surprise was the innuendo between the men and the nurses in the hospital when Alan was in hospital awaiting his operation. What was clearly a peek show is dismissed by the nurse rather cleverly as nothing but a ‘freckle’. At the time the euphemism sailed well over my head.
At this point, I knew I Can Jump Puddles wouldn’t slot neatly into my school library collection. But I continued reading as I was starting to make connections.
Primarily there was a connection to Alan. This connection hadn’t been apparent to me as a child, most likely because I had not yet experienced the social stigmatism of disability.
I too can recount many times that society has disabled me more than my own body has. That the weight of words, the “You can’t do this” and the “You shouldn’t do that” was often the catalyst to achieve more than had been expected of me. And like many disabled people, I overcompensate. I work harder to be considered an equal.
During Chapter Twenty-eight, in the midst of a sing-along, a character called Prince sings, “Will the Angels Let Me Play?” a row ensues, where Arthur gives Prince a mouthful for singing a song about a crippled child. Alan, he points out, does not know he is crippled and the song should never have been sung in front of him.
That’s when the irony hit home for me — just as Alan had not connected himself to the child in the song, I had not connected myself with Alan as a child. I Can Jump Puddles was a book about a boy with Polio and as far as I was concerned, it was a book about a life that was very different from mine.
As an adult, these universal connections between disabled people are crystal clear to me, and while every disabled or chronically ill person travels a different path, we face many of the same challenges.
I Can Jump Puddles isn’t merely a snapshot of the times, or the journey of a boy determined to live fully, it’s a message that deserves to be heard and remembered. It’s a cry of defiance against the social model of disability and a reminder of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.
