This is the slightly edited book review I left for Jacky Ha-Ha by James Patterson on goodreads. The book is aimed for tweens and came out in 2016. Please be aware it contains spoilers for the book if you want to read it, but I don’t recommend unless you want to be let down and devastated by the ending.

* * *

SO. CLOSE. But…

As an adult who stutters, I’ve been told such good things about this book for tweens about a stuttering 12-year old girl.

Overall, I was really enjoying it for the first 90%. Jacky is pretty wild, and the storyline is clever. I thought it captured a lot of the fears and emotions around stuttering very well, and encouraged Jacky to rise above the bullies (including a teacher) who make awful comments about her stutter.

Red Flag #1: Then wee get hit with the sentence, from someone who is helping her, “Stuttering happens when we try to squeeze out words faster than our mouth can handle them.” … Uh-oh. That’s not how stuttering works. I was officially nervous now for her big speech, which was the book’s climax. We were doing so well! I was close to recommending this book on my stuttering advocacy account.

So then… the climax. The big speech starts off with a couple stutters - excellent! My hope was UP! Audience isn’t doing great about it, but mom smiles at her. But then Jacky remembers her new magic cure: slowing down. *eye roll* and suddenly she is perfectly fluent the rest of the speech. She says it best afterwards, “Once I got going, I didn’t stutter once.”

My heart broke. We were SO CLOSE. SOO CLOSE.

This book has misinformation about stuttering and turns it into “overcoming your disability inspiration” nonsense. I was soooo disappointed. What’s worse is how easy it would’ve been to make this stuttering-informed. She even semi-discloses her stutter at the start of her speech! She could have stuttered during the speech and let it been okay!

In fact, I would love to see a rerelease of this book. Changes could be really minor. Adjust a few lines, sprinkle in some stuttering to that big scene.

It’s still a powerful speech. The lesson that I know, that this book does not contain and should: You can be an incredible speaker and also have a stutter.

Slowing down doesn’t cure stuttering. This is an absolutely ridiculous and a harmful myth to rely on for a story. It may assist some people with stuttering less… but in no way would a stutterer be cured to give a big class presentation just by remembering to slow down. Really embarrassing.

So many pros for this book- if not for a couple red flag lines, and then the climax and other little related pieces, I’d easily give 5 stars. Alas, I was left heartbroken. It covers a lot of topics very well. But the stuttering ending speech and commentary is so so so off-the-mark that I can’t, in good faith, give it any additional stars.

It would be unethical to recommend this book to a child who stutters, possibly giving them false hope that they can cure their stutter, and suggesting that someone’s speech can only be effective and powerful without stuttering.

Rating: 1 out of 5 starts