A review by onkenzisshelf
One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

challenging emotional funny inspiring reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

What I Liked:
  • This book is pretty far outside of my normal comfort zone, which is something I'm trying to push myself to do in 2022. This was a BBBC pick, and I went into it knowing NOTHING about it. I was absolutely blown away.
  • Firstly, the characters. I've never seen characters painted so beautifully. Each sister was SO unique and shaped by their small town in different ways. I loved each one of them. The town's residents were also wonderful - I particularly loved Tom, who devoted his life to making the disabled residents' lives a little easier with the minimal resources they had.
  • The disability representation was OTHER WORLDLY. Mirabel can only move her right hand, and sometimes, on a good day, her head. Yet she is the smartest, most caring person. In this story, there are 3 tracks at the school, a top, a middle, and a bottom. In the bottom tier are all the disabled kids, of which there are a lot. The issue this book paints is that the disabled kids are automatically placed in those classes, regardless of how smart they are. This is a perfect example of how ableism is ingrained into our society. Mirabel literally assigned herself extra work to keep on track. Then we get to Monday, who one can only assume is autistic. I love how we got to see the way her brain works - from only being "allowed" to eat yellow foods and wear yellow clothes, unless it rains, in which case the color is green. We got to see how she does not understand the line between sarcasm and being literal. We saw how upset she got when things changed or didn't go "the way they were supposed to", but that the way Monday reacted was perfectly okay.
  • A small detail, but I loved how this town was set up to make the people who were disabled's lives easier. There were ramps everywhere and doorways were bigger to allow for large, electric wheelchairs. Even Mirabel states that if she were to leave Bourne, her life would be infinitely harder.