This book was a lot of fun. I have said it before, I love memoir type books and that is what this is. Not a memoir but a true story of a young boys life and the meeting of his best friend and their times together.
HK Derryberry's life started out pretty rough. He was born early and with difficulties. He spent the first 90 days of his life in the NICU at Vanderbuilt Hospital. Not a great start, but with his ever cheerful attitude he made the best of life with what he had. He has cerbral palsy and was born blind, his mom died at birth and his dad wasn't up to being an adult so he goes home with his grandma to be raised by her.
The story begins with the author seeing HK sitting by himself in the restaurant his Grandma works at and their striking up a conversation and it goes from there. HK spends a lot of time sitting there because his grandma can't afford childcare and she has to work to pay the bills of course. For some reason Mr. Bradford is pulled to HK and he keeps going back to visit and get to know him. The more he gets to know him the more he starts to get involved into HK's life and helping him become a socially acceptable, functioning young man that every one loves.
Something pretty cool about HK is his brain has perfect retention. He has highly superior autobiographical memory, he doesn't forget anything that has happened to him. To me what is interesting about that is that his IQ isn't real high, just his memory. So school still was a challenge, because what he remembers is things that have happened that include him. It is very useful to him as a blind person to be able to remember where things are so well for navigating.
This is a great story of caring, sharing and doing to help others and in the end helping yourself just as much!
This book was written by Jim Bradford with Andy Hardin. Another interesting fact is this book was written in an effort to provide for HK when his Grandma and Mr Bradford are no longer able to care for him.
Happy reading and Happy fall,
~Anna
Kind of here.
