LITTLE PEOPLE: Learning to See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes, by Dan Kennedy. Rodale. 296 pages. $24.95.
Dan and Barbara Kennedys' beautiful second child, Becky, was born with achondroplasia. That means that as an adult, she will be 4 feet tall, give or take a couple of inches -- and her head will be larger than most people's, her arms and legs will be tiny, and she will "waddle when she walks," her father confides in Little People.
Dan Kennedy is a journalist, currently media critic for the Boston Phoenix -- a man trained to ask questions and seek understanding. But this time the subject was personal: wanting to see the world through Becky's eyes became the driving force behind Kennedy's search for answers to such troubling questions as how our culture would perceive and respond to Becky's differences and how she could achieve a productive, fruitful life with dignity.
From the time she was old enough to understand, he says, "we've been telling Becky that size doesn't matter, that she would grow up just like everyone else, even though she wasn't going to grow up." And, he advises, "when you have a child with a disability, you can't stop learning, asking questions, or pushing for more and better answers."
For example, had the Kennedys followed the Ritalin trail when Becky first started school and seemed to be inattentive, her disease-related cognitive problem would have been masked and perhaps never addressed. The drug offers a performance-enhancing therapy that helps sharpen anyone's concentration -- but Becky's real problem is a central-auditory-processing disorder, characterized by the inability of the brain to understand what the ears are hearing.
Kennedy's deeply rooted hope for Becky's meaningful place in this unpredictable world drives him to seek answers to "what it means to be different -- the good, the bad, the myths, the truths."
He weighs the risks and rewards of bone-stretching surgery; he seeks out and interviews adult dwarfs on their home turf for insights into how Becky might attain a life of quality in spite of her difference; he attends and writes about the meetings of Little People of America, knowing his daughter will have to build a life for herself in a world with people of average height.
He worries that when society looks at a person with a disability, it sees only the disability -- not the person. And he explores the possibility of the world putting eugenics into practice.
If all children with a random genetic mutation had parental advocates as supportive and persistent as Dan Kennedy, they would indeed be fortunate. And readers who seek to know them could not ask for a better guide.
Jeanne Nicholson is a freelance reviewer and columnist in Newport.
