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Complicating Moose's Life

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This novel set in 1935 is about a 12 year old boy named Moose who moves to Alcatraz Island where his father can work as a prison warden and his Autistic sister, Natalie can attend a special school in San Francisco. Moving to the new place, he misses his old baseball team and struggles for recognition in his new school. He never sees his Dad because he is always working and Natalie demands all his mother's attention. Natalie is rejected from the special school, crushing his parents' hopes for Natalie's education. Moose now must take care of Natalie after school while his mother teaches music lessons and he must find a way to deal with Natalie's screaming fits and constant needs. Complicating Moose's life even more is Piper, the daughter of the prison warden. Piper lures Moose into her scheme to make money by …show more content…

The manifestation of Natalie's disorder in the book is evident in her mannerisms, she holds her mouth too open and her shoulders uneven. When she is agitated, she has the habit of digging her chin viciously into her collarbone. Natalie has an amzing understanding of all things having to do with numbers. She can solve complex math problems spontaneously in her head, loves studying the indexes of books, and can spend hours making intricate patterns with buttons or pebbles. However, she never smiles and she rarely looks directly at people. She is prone to screaming, having tantrums and ordinarily parrots the words of others or speaks in single words or short phrases. Although it is extremely difficult for her, she tries hard to communicate in a normal manner with those around her. A seven year old character in the book fittingly describes her as "Natalie lives in her own world...sometimes it's a good world and sometimes it's a bad world. And sometimes she can get out and sometimes she

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