Occasionally, her well-phrased prose slips into cliché, and when she lists the math skills that she could not perform she becomes rather pedantic. Abeel relates her experiences with detached clarity, but each situation is followed by the thoughts and feelings that finally forced her to face her differences. This account is an interesting mix of factual information and memories. At least now there was a name for her difficulties and strategies she could employ. When she was finally diagnosed with dyscalculia, she and her family felt relief. By seventh grade, her feelings of insecurity had reached an all-time high, and she began to experience anxiety attacks over everything from having to remember her locker combination to managing her schoolwork to staying overnight at a friend's. Having been a gifted, creative preschooler, she was not prepared for the realization, in second grade, that she could not do many of the tasks that her classmates could accomplish with ease.
S-Recommended for senior high school students.Grade 9 Up-Abeel writes of her torturous year in seventh grade when she was diagnosed with a learning disability. The contents are of particular interest to young adolescents and their teachers. J-Recommended for junior high school students. The only drawback of this paperback edition is its rather small print. Reading much like fiction, My Thirteenth Winter is a must-purchase for any library, especially where memoirs are in demand. This is a chronicle of emotions, frustrations, and fights to get properly diagnosed and develop a personal strategy to adapt to internal differences readers will be touched by the rawness and honesty with which Abeel tells her story-one that reminds us that appearing "normal" rarely tells the entire story. It was not until 8th grade, her "thirteenth winter," that the underlying cause of her academic challenges was discovered.
Abeel retreated socially as she became increasingly frustrated with her inability to do that which most take for granted. This dread and the added weight of not being what everyone thought her to be led to depression and full-blown panic attacks that began to cripple her emotionally. She dreaded being called on during class for fear of the embarrassment of not being able to answer questions others seemed to understand with little effort.
Never understanding why she worked twice as hard as other students with little improvement in math, Abeel had always been considered among the smartest in her class. Samantha Abeel uses her strong writing ability, discovered and nurtured by caring teachers in school, to tell of her struggle to come to grips with a long-undiagnosed learning disability. "Sometimes a challenge can be an inspiration." So reads the cover on this touching, honest sharing of a life misunderstood for so long. My thirteenth winter, a memoir." Retrieved from My thirteenth winter, a memoir." The Free Library.
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