Book Review: Unlocked by Karen Kingsbury

First off, I love Karen Kingsbury, so when I saw on the Zondervan Blog that this book was up for review, I quickly entered to review it.  Secondly, all of you who know me know that I have a passion for children with special needs, especially autism.  Since I am a music therapist, I get to work with a lot of children with autism.  (This is partly why I have always spread apart shots and delayed the MMR so much because almost all of my families that I work with had a "typical" child until they got the shot and then the next day their child was gone.  Not that I think it's only the vaccine, but that post is for another day!) 

Anyway, this book was absolutely wonderful.  It has some parts that were hard to read, because of the fact that a group of football players would bully Holden (the one with autism), as well as many other "misfits" in the school.  This eventually led to one chid (the child, Michael) that stood up for Holden to commit suicide.

Holden goes from being locked inside his autistic world and not being able to express himself to coming out of his autism more through music and theatre.  He was able to hold conversations, to look people in the eyes, etc. because Ella (his best friend when he was little) fought for him to have a place on stage for their next drama performance.  Holden even sang a song and danced, and afterwards gave Ella a hug, which was huge because he never let anyone touch him.

This book meant a lot to me because of the music aspect as well.  In my daily workings with children with autism, I see the power of music and the miracles that God performs through them daily.  Are they different?  Yes.  Can they learn the same things that everyone else does?  Yes.  It just takes them longer and that's okay.  I currently have several kiddos learning the piano and I can't help but smile and tear up when I hear the play a song PERFECTLY and sing.  I love working with them and, despite singing my directions for 30 minutes, I can get them to sit in a chair for 30 ENTIRE minutes when no one else can.  I absolutely love it when parents leave saying "I don't know how you do it!"  Is it a challenge to work with them?  Yes.  But it pushes me to be the best music therapist I can be.  They are the most compassionate, sweetest kids I know.  They are funny and work so hard to do what most of us take for granted. 

Can you tell I'm passionate about this?  I found myself crying in this book because I could see the faces of my clients throughout here.  They do get teased and often pushed to the side.  I've had some kicked out of school because they "couldn't control their behaviors."  I'm constantly amazed at what these parents have to go through on a daily basis and the loneliness they feel.  I'm also reminded about my cousin, Shannon, through this book and our many conversations we used to have about people staring at her just because she was different.  Sometimes, I think that's the hardest part.  People act like it's no big deal, but it's huge.  Each child, each person has a story.  But it's our responsibility to take the time to learn it, even if it takes longer than we'd like and we have to inconvenience ourselves more.

Definitely check this book out.  It's such a wonderful story!

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This book was provided free by Zondervan for review.  I was in no way required to write a positive review of this book.