Sweet About Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

Two posts in one day!?  Yes, I admit it I did miss posting yesterday (or I didn't depending on where you are in the world) but I have a seriously good excuse - I spent the whole day buried in one of the finest pieces of literature I have ever devoured.  Handle with Care follows the lives of those who have been touched by a young girls chronic disability.  Six year old Willow O'keefe suffers from Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) which is a genetic disorder more commonly known as Brittle Bone Disease, this disease sentences Willow to a childhood of excruciating pain, hospital visits, multiple operations and constant physio therapy.

Handle with Care is primarily a story about Osteogenesis Imperfecta but Jodi Picoult was also able to graciously tackle more controversial and moreal issues issues such as abortion, the long term struggles of adoption, divorce, self harm and teenage eating disorders.  These issues were told through the eyes of a mother, father, close family friend, family attorney and a teenage daughter.  This allows the reader to fully understand the impacts such a disease may have on the family and friends on the disabled.  

I will leave you with a few quotes which I thought were absolutely beautiful and hopefully entice you to go and acquire this novel.

“Things break all the time. Glass and dishes and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a horse, a dollar. You can break the ice. There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever... promises break. Hearts break.” (Page 1)

"Willow, I whispered, the name that your father and I had agreed on. I had had to convince him. I won't call her that, he said. They weep. But I wanted to give you a prophecy to carry with you, the name of a tree that bends instead of breaking." (Page 5)

"Who has the right to decide what kind of life is too limited to be worth living?" (Page 53)

"The mothers who have broken babies, and spend the rest of our lives wondering if we should have spared them." (Page 191)

If you have read the book, or are just generally interested in finding out more about  Osteogenesis Imperfecta you can visit the Osteogenesis Imperfecta website for more infromation.

Keep it sweet, 

Cortney