A Kind of Spark by Ellie McNicoll

"When my hands are restless and I need to stim, I now imagine that they contain magic. That the twitchy feeling is just fire trying to get out. If I spread my fingers and blast my palm, a shot of magic will fly out. Enough to show all those who belittle and mock that there is a kind of power they will never touch".

A Kind of Spark by Ellie McNicoll is a middle grade story with an engaging heroine.

Blurb:

Addie knows exactly who she is. Addie knows that sharks are more interesting than dolphins, she knows her favourite words in the thesaurus, and she knows that her older sisters are opposites.

And when Addie learns about the witch trials that happened in her hometown, she knows there is more to the story of these "witches", just like there is more to her. As Addie tries to get her small town to make a memorial for the "witches", can she challenge the way they see her?

Addie lives with her parents and older twin sisters Keedie and Nina in a small town named Juniper. Eleven-years-old Addie is autistic, and so is one of her older sisters, Keedie, who goes to the university. Nina stays at home and lives a pretend life as an influencer.

There is a special bond between Addie and Keedie, as they understand each other's behaviours and issues. 

Addie's friend from primary school Jenna doesn't want to be friends any longer, and gangs up with a nasty bully Emily to taunt Addie. 

Miss Murphy is a teacher from hell, who has no understanding of Abbie's condition. She's so awful that she's bordering on the caricature.

On the lead up to Hallowe'en the class is studying the topic of witches and witch-hunting. It so happens, that some of the women tried for witchcraft came from their village. 

Addie is feeling angry and upset. "The unfairness of it sits in my stomach like a stone. I imagine women being frightened and alone as they are thrown into the cold water..."

She escapes to the library, her safe place, to find as much as possible about the witch trials in Scotland. A new girl in her class, Audrey, offers her help with the research.

Addie comes up with a plan to create a memorial for all those wronged women. She attends the Juniper village committee meeting to propose a memorial - "a plaque or a statue that commemorates the people that were unjustely sentenced to death". The idea is not met with enthusiasm, as it might tarnish the reputation of the village. Undeterred, Addie doesn't give up, she plans to raise the same issue at the next meeting and keep campaigning around the village.

School life becomes unbearable with the bullying by both the students and Miss Murphy. 

In the meantime, Keedie is having a tough time at the university and experiencing a burnout.

How can Addie help her sister, and make the villagers support her idea of the memorial for the wronged women?

A Kind of Spark was the winner of the Waterstones Best Book for Younger Readers and Overall Winner in 2021, and winner of The Blue Peter Prize for Best Story 2021.

I wanted to love this book, I truly did, but its kind of spark didn't quite put its magic spell on me.

The target audience is possibly lower middle grade, with a very simple language and a lot of explanations of easy words like "acute" or "a curse". I do enjoy reading middle grade/YA fiction, and it just didn't click. I think it might be the cutesy tone that slightly put me off.

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Positive elements: an image of a girl on the spectrum (there are quite a few fictional accounts of boys with autism). Both Addie and Keedie are autistic, they present different grades of the spectrum, with Keedie being able to pass as a neuro-typical in her later years (and finding it very strenuous). 

Addie insists on being called autistic, rather than having autism. But that is Addie. Reading extensively on different forums and social media, many people on the spectrum prefer to be called people with/having autism rather than autistic.

It is important to have books with diverse characters. Learning empathy and standing up against bullying are some of the messages of this book. And most important, being yourself, not trying to mask and being something else which is alien to you.

Addie speaks with a humourless directness, which is endearing and refreshing. Her inability to read social cues makes her awkward and makes her rely on the formalistic rules of behaviour. But empathy is her forte. Reading about the witches, she is able to sympathise with their ordeal and suffer emotional and even physical pain.

This story is a source of behavioural signs and signals of autism that neuro typical people might not be aware of. Ultimately better understanding of the condition might lead to a more universal acceptance. Addie talks of how difficult it is sometimes to cope with everyday stimuli, "Loud noises make my head spin, they feel like a drill against a sensitive nerve".  "Stimming is something I do when I'm overwhelmed. My hands fizz and flap, my limbs become restless... There could be good stimming, there can be bad stimming, but a lot of time I have to hide it".

Children should be aware of what neuro diverse behaviours are in order to understand, empathise and not bully.

For example, while queuing in the cafe last week I observed the following scene. My husband was sitting at one of the tables with our son who's severely autistic (non verbal and easily agitated). A family arrived with three primary school kids, who sat at the table further away. The children were screeching at the top of their voices, and our son started to make distressing sounds. One of the boys saw him, laughed and started copying the sounds in a mocking way. The mother spotted that, left the queue, came up to him and whispered something, thankfully he stopped his taunting. 

Negative: Addie's inner thoughts are often overly didactic. Not sure, if this is intentional, as part of her autistic personality, or inadvertent.

An abundance of ignorant class mates and insensitive unsympathetic adults who are cruel towards the neuro-diverse characters is irrational. Nasty Emily, Addie's class mate, is a poster girl for ableism. Jenna is not much better.

Ms Murphy might not be in the same category as tyrannical Miss Trunchbull from Matilda, but she is getting there. Would a modern day teacher behave like this? ripping a student's work apart in class and mocking their disability?! 

I don't deny that there are ghastly people who should never be allowed to work with vulnerable children. Our son has had some encounters with horrible people in the past, but that was dealt with. Overall, he has been supported and cared for in all school settings by people who genuinely love their job and students. 

Finally, I wasn't keen on the parallel of "othering" people with autism in modern times with those unfortunates who were accused of witchcraft centuries earlier. It didn't work for me as a plot device. 

It's over-simplistic to explain the witch hunt by fear of otherness. There were many factors, from political to social reasons (for example, widowed or single women as a financial burden for the community), greed, women's sexuality (which is not a topic for the children's book) and many more. 

Books like A Kind of Spark spread the message, give an insight and teach compassion and kindness.