Can Dannie make the right decisions with your help?
‘Dannie’s Dilemas’ is a series of books designed to show the difficulties that children with Aspergers Syndrome face on a daily basis.
The books are an interactive way for readers to get involved with Dannie’s Dilemas. The reader has the ability to choose the way the stories end. This makes them unique in their own way.
Dannie is an eleven year old Aspergers child, she is smart, friendly and very helpful, but due to the Aspergers she finds it difficult to assess situations, work out what people think and really mean, make daily choices and understand emotions and sayings.
Like most Aspergers children Dannie does find herself in trouble quite a few times for taking people literally, especially with idioms, ‘Dannie’s Dilemas’ tries to explain as many idioms as possible.
Seeing life through Dannie’s eyes shows us all how emotionally difficult it is for Aspergers children to understand the world that we take for granted every day.
In ‘The Spelling Saga’ Dannie has a secret about her spellings which she does not want to tell anybody. Dannie believes that a secret should be kept at all times.
Dannie finds herself in trouble in the morning as she is avoiding learning her spellings with her mother. Her avoidance makes her run late and she misses her TV time before going to school. This creates arguments and tantrums.
While Dannie is at school, she notices that the date is wrong on the class white board and Dannie creates a disturbance once more. As she cannot let the matter drop and insists that the date has to be fixed.
During lunch time Dannie meets up with her friends, during a conversation one of Dannie’s friends mentions about Dannie’s recent spelling tests. How Dannie was very good at spellings and has been top of the class. Dannie begins to feel unwell and cannot work out why she is feeling sick, Dannie ignores the feeling and leaves her friends.
Later in the day Dannie completes her spelling test but cannot shake the sick feeling. Dannie is sent to the school nurse who tries to inform Dannie that the reason she is feeling ill is due to the fact that she is hiding something. Dannie gets very upset and runs out of the nurse’s office and heads back to her classroom, wondering if the nurse could be right and if she really was feeling ill because of her secret.
When Dannie returns to class, Dannie’s teacher Miss Phillips calls Dannie to inform her that once again Dannie has top marks in her spelling test. Dannie receives lots of praise for her work and merits for doing so well. Miss Phillips also tells Dannie that because she is doing so well with the spellings, she feels that Dannie should try some harder spellings. This makes Dannie feel even worse than before and the sick feeling is getting stronger.
After school, Dannie’s mother asks Dannie how she got on with her spelling test and Dannie avoids answering her as much as possible. Dannie’s mother finally insists that she sees Dannie’s spellings for the coming week and Dannie has no choice but to show her mother the difficult spellings that Miss Phillips gave Dannie earlier.
Dannie’s mother reacted angrily at the spellings set out for Dannie and assumes that Dannie’s teacher is bullying Dannie as her mother knows that Dannie cannot spell and doesn’t understand why a teacher would give a child who cannot spell words which would be impossible for her to learn.
The sick feeling that Dannie had been suffering with all day finally erupts, Dannie ends up being sick in Dannie’s mother’s friend’s house and this is where Dannie’s Dilemma begins.
Should Dannie tell someone her secret? Or should Dannie keep quiet, and tell no one?
Only the reader can decide the outcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment