The Short Bus 1st (first) edition Text Only

by Jonathan Mooney

Excellent Book

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Education, Disability, Biography, Biography Memoir, Teaching

Paperback

First published May 29, 2007

Reviews

[Carmen Coppola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the Short Bus until I realized something, Mooney is just as ableist as anyone else and his disability doesn't excuse him from that. I found that his view of people with disabilities is incredibly biased if they have a disability that is different from his own. People who have ADHD or "high functioning" autism were discribed by Mooney as "not actually disabled" but when he interacted with people who had physical disabilities or more severe disabilities from his own, he would treat them poorly. He was transphobic towards a transgendered woman and implied that her gender identity was as a result of her disabilities and he continuously held people to traditional ideas of what success is. If you read this book thinking it was great for people with disabilities, read this book as if you were one of the people he talked about. I'm sure that you would not like to be described in the same way he described Katie or Cookie.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author takes a short bus around the country to interview freaks, weirdos, and other seemingly bizarre people who may or may not have been diagnosed with a disability.

Mooney is no outsider, as being labeled dyslexic himself, he went through similar experiences as the rest of his interviewees. This is a good thing, in my opinion, as it gets away from the "look at these abnormal people who are not like us, but are special in their own way" attitude and more of a "we are all weird, and that is good" attitude.

Well, kind of. My biggest complaint is in fact the author's perspective. His experiences are quite similar to mine - a "hopeless case" who "defies the odds" and ends up going to a great college and doing work that seems in direct conflict with his disability. Hell, while I was never nearly as popular in high school as him, my most popular period was the direct result of PE classes in my senior year where I was one of the best soccer players (Mooney was a soccer player and went to college on a soccer scholarship). But, our attitudes are not the same. I never strove to be "normal", to "cure' myself. I embraced what I was and, because of my experiences, did my best to embrace others for their differences. Mooney's path took him to becoming a "normal" kid, a jock who made fun of other different kids. While not entirely like his teenage self, he still holds some of the same feelings. Multiple times in the book, he has great apprehension with meeting with some of the people, particularly the people with the more obvious, "uncomfortable" disabilities, even going as far as considering blowing them off and driving on. While he is indeed moving away from being the "supercrip" (IE, a person with a disability who "overcomes" her/his disability, serving as an inspirational story for typical people and something to be aspired to - a role model of how one should act and behave - for disabled people), there are points at which I am totally shocked by his thoughts and opinions of other people. While each encounter generally ends well ("Wow! What a unique, special person who is more like a typical person than everyone realizes!"), I keep getting the feeling that he feels himself separate and unlike from the people he meets, relating more the typical people in his interviewees' lives.

While his attitude irks me, I do admit that it leads to better, more powerful book. The majority of the people who read this are not going to be like me. While it is certainly important for the disability community to have books about "us", written by "us", influencing the attitudes of the rest the world is also important. What Mooney did was create a book that typical people can relate to, which is something that I doubtfully could do. The biggest complaints that I see for the general population about books written from "our" perspective is that is their inability to understand and emphasize with the narrator, but Mooney has emotions, thoughts, and reactions that an average person would have, making him a superior author for communicating this message to others not like "us".

Other things that are commendable about Mooney's writing is his inclusion of a large variety of different types of people, specifically those with "invisible" (generally non-apparent/obvious) disabilities, instead of just focusing on the "big three" (deaf/blind/mobility impaired). This is likely due to his own disability, and this makes him one of the few writers that someone with dyslexia/LD really get to relate with, since most of the older writings from the disability community comes from someone of the "big three" persuasion. He also emphasizes the importance of uniqueness and diverseness over a homogenized population as well as the trickiness of labels, both medical (being labeled as "disabled" or not, different types of labels for effectively the same time and what they mean) and social (what people call each other and how people self identify).

In all, an excellent piece of work. Even though it was not exactly directed at people like me, there is plenty I can take from the book, and I certainly recognize if importance for other audiences.

[Rrshively · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book gives a lot to think about when encountering people who seem out of the mainstream. I was also amazed at the descriptive language the "LD" author used. As a former special education teacher, I saw a lot of the problems described in the book. Many of us in recent years have tried to give the student support, confidence, and self-love. Unfortunately most extra help can only be given with a label. Many of my LD students have been brilliant in a unique way. From the 5th grade Western romance writer who couldn't spell to the boy who could beat all classmates as to which state was being described with just a few clues, my life was enriched. If you are in trouble, and the only way out is an out-of-the-box answer, you need an LD kid with you.
Very few of my students in the various places I taught actually rode a short bus. Many were mainstreamed with support in the classroom for brief times in the special ed. room. I made many mistakes, but I never did tell any of my students to "act normal". However I did inform a high school student of ways to appear normal in the classroom to fool his teacher. We had a sort of conspiracy. One of my main objections to the book is that I don't believe Jonathan can come to full fruition to the person he is if he has to get drunk every time he is sad, mad, or glad. That keeps him from being the role model he needs to be: unique but at least temperate.

[Melissa Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was assigned to read this as summer reading before entering my first year of college. I thought I would hate it and have trouble relating to it. However, I quite enjoyed this journey of a novel. I have always been a fairly good student and never understood my peers that didn't get good grades. This book helped me to understand that some people really do have problems with school and it wasn't whiney as I thought it would be. If you have ever felt like you didn't belong, you will be able to relate to this book. It is a book about self-discovery and overcoming obstacles. It illustrates part of the problem with the American school system. I don't generally like this kind of book (overcoming challenge blah blah blah whine whine my life is so tough, but I will be strong and show everyone that I cannot be stopped. CHEEZY.), but this novel had a different, much more interesting approach. The author doesn't portray himself as a perfect, always good person. He embraces his flaws and tries to learn from them.

[Maria · Rating 1 out of 5]

So far I'm not too impressed. I don't really like to read about people who have overcome the odds only to find out they are still bitter and negative. It makes it feel more like a story of hopelessness rather than hope for others with similar challenges. I also feel like he is too hard on people who are sincerely trying to makes things better. Hopefully it improves as I read along.

Update. . . gave up on reading this for awhile.

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really excited about it after reading the back cover and the first few pages, after hearing an interview with Mooney. I thought it was going to be a revolutionary perspective on celebrating differences. Alas, it did not turn out to be. Though it promised to be a book about people Mooney had met, it was really about himself - a young fella who has not necessarily embraced his differences, but at least outwardly overcome them. It was not necessary to refer to his post-secondary education by brand name EVERY single time... Brown, Brown, Brown... My daughter with disabilities will not be attending Brown. I had hoped to be able to recommend it to people as a way to mitigate pity and underestimation of my perfect seedling daughter. No dice. Maybe he should have waited until his experiences fermented a bit before writing it.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories of these "otherly-abled" individuals profiled in this book are a blunt reminder of how tenuously we can cling to the label of "normal" to describe ourselves and others. Rather, the human condition is a collection of continuums, and where we land is largely due to fate. This book is important in that it could help bring forth compassion towards "the other"--those that face physical, emotional, and mental obstacles in their lives through no fault of their own, relegated to riding "The Short Bus" through their lives.

[Moira Allbritton · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were fewer moments of humor than expected.

There were stretches of the book that could have benefited from an editor not forcing the reader to experience a cross-country road trip in real-time.

But there were glimpses of beauty and meaning and philosophy that will stay with me.

2.5 rounded up.

[Emily Hewitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know why it was so hard for me to get into this book but I guess it just wasn’t for me. The author seemed to ramble a lot and it just sort of dragged on.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to keep reminding myself that this book was written in 2007. It is still a poor excuse for the belittling and ableism.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a chore

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is interesting in the way it presents a different perspective of our education system and social norms. I think things are a little better today than in Mooney's day, but I was not aware of the types of struggles faced by 'disabled' people who society tries to make 'normal.' I enjoyed the story and the message, but I am not one for this type of casual, almost informal writing style.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Confession: I bought this looking for a memoir detailing the author's escape from special education. It was clear from the book jacket that he had begun school with severe dyslexia and could not read for years, but somehow emerged from an Ivy League college with an honors degree in English literature of all things. HOW? How did this happen? I was down for some memoir reading.

But this ain't that.

Instead, this is apparently Mooney's second book, a sequel of sorts to the memoir for which I was salivating. I read it anyway. His quirky trip arond the country in a short bus, interviewing special ed students and their families certainly made for unusual reading. I'm not sure another book exactly like it exists anywhere.

But it's not really a travelogue. The places are interesting, particularly his description of his time at BURNING MAN. But this is a book about people, most of them suffering like the rejects on Rudolph's "Island of Misfit Toys." I don't mean to speak ill of them. I sympathize, actually. I struggled greatly in school myself and I understand the way the institution can herd children this way and that like cattle heading to the slaughter. It's awful. The eight years I spent teaching in public schools did not restore my faith in the system, nor did the years my wife spent as a special ed teacher.

On the other hand, schools are being asked to address some incredible challenges. If you think it is hard for kids like the author, so riddled by dyslexia that he could not read until he was 12, imagine trying to teach reading to a class of twenty or thirty kids when two or three of them have such severe challenges. That is an extraordinary burden for any teacher. Students like Mr. Mooney need a great deal of personalized attention (which his mother found for him), and most will not receive it.

He does not claim to have answers. But Mooney's book raises SO MANY QUESTIONS.

SO MANY QUESTIONS! Here are a few:

What is normal? Is dyslexia normal? Is Down Syndrome normal? Is Autism/Asberger's best understood as existing on a continuum? Is there actually a spectrum--and if you move far enough in one direction or another, will you reach normal? (Again, what is "normal"?) Is everyone on that spectrum? Is ADHD really a thing? If so, why does it disappear (as Mooney points out) when kids are playing video games? If ADHD is a thing, what is the cause? How can you measure it, define it, and treat it? Does ADD/ADHD also exist on a spectrum? If so, are we all ADD at some point, or some of the time? Again--does ADHD even exist? Did it exist a century ago or did schools invent the condition as a way of labeling some behaviors bad while normalizing others?

Can a blind girl be "normal"? Can a blind and deaf child be normal? And are lip-reading skills and cochlear implants going to destroy American Sign Language? Is it worth it for deaf children to essentially function as hearing children, thus depriving the deaf community of new members? Is that a thing? Are we anti-deaf if we try to equip deaf children to fully participate in the hearing world?

These are interesting questions. Mooney raises all the right issues. But it remained his personal story that kept me interested in his odd quest. I still want to know how he overcame what were incredibly difficult challenges. I also want to know whether he wrote every word of this book. So often he speaks about not being able to read and write, as though that were understood. Yet, he graduated with a degree in literature... I'm assuming he wrote the book, yet, I remain unsure.

I enjoyed putting some of his quotes on Facebook:

***

THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD (Which kind are you?)

"No one really got angry at any of our insane dogs. My family's carpets always reeked of urine. It wasn't until I went to Brown and visited my college friends' houses that I realized it was not the norm to have the carpets smell like a zoo. I quickly learned that there are two types of people in this world: those whose carpets reek and those whose carpets do not. I accept the fact that my family falls into the first category, and I'm more comfortable around people who know this sort of secret shame."

from THE SHORT BUS: A JOURNEY BEYOND NORMAL, by Jonathan Mooney.

***

(Shared this one for my friends in Austin.)

"Austin itself seemed flat to me, though Texans insist that the city is situated on a hill ... To hear natives hype Austin's aesthetics, one would think Austin was like Rome--a city raised to the heights by seven mythic hills--and that the Colorado River flowed like the storied Tiber. Needless to say, neither the hills nor the river are mythic, but Austin is still a beautiful city, in a quiet kind of way, and the river does drift with a rhythm, pace, and purpose, leading nowhere in particular but still somewhere in general."

***

A WRITER HUNTING AMERICA'S FREAK SHOWS VISITS GRACELAND.

"The gate in front of Elvis's house seemed to be a Wailing Wall of sorts. People had left flowers, notes, and gifts. As we drove through the gate, a man dressed as Michael Jackson danced out front. He had it down: one glove, a white sequined shirt with tight black pants, and a perfect moonwalk down the street. The tour begins with the formal dining room, the archetypal room of an American family. We're supposed to imagine him there, perhaps during the fat period, wearing an outrageous outfit and carving a Christmas goose ... I wondered what pulled people here. People lined up to see Stalin's tomb in Red Square, Mao's in Tiananmen Square, but in the United States, we went to Graceland. Every culture has these places where we stand in line to stare at a body."

***

"My mom, a radical philistine, denounced any music, or art, that wasn't for the revolution. But even this was a pose. Mom was passionate about Bob Dylan, U2, and Bruce Springsteen, of course, any band that sang about the working man or politics. But she also fell in love with Paul Simon's RHYTHYM OF THE SAINTS. I caught her one day playing this album. She was standing near the sink, her sleeves rolled up from washing dishes, staring out the window watching the snow fall. When she saw me, she turned the music off and looked to the floor as if I'd seen her naked."

***
ABOUT THAT TIME YOU WERE LOCKED UP IN AN ASYLUM...

"I learned something really important about 'normal' then," he said, and looked directly at me. "I learned that sickness is really normal. That sickness is a part of health. I learned that normal is so much bigger than we think.... When you realize that sickness is normal, you're free. You can stop trying to be other than as you are."

(And so concludes our series of quotations from THE SHORT BUS: A JOURNEY BEYOND NORMAL, by Jonathan Mooney, a writer with an honors degree in English from Brown who nevertheless could not read until he was 12, had dyslexia and more, and yes, rode the short bus.)

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the first few chapters as I liked the author's writing style and thought the premise was unique. However, throughout the course of the book, I lost interest. Despite his apparent success, the author seemed very jaded and disillusioned with education, the school system and society in general. There are definitely problems in all of the these areas. But he didn't offer solutions, he only railed against some of the very people, at least some of which, are trying to help.

As a special education teacher myself, it was frustrating to read. It felt as if he went on and on about how teachers (and others) only want students with learning disabilities to "act normal". I've never once asked a student to "act normal". There are, however, certain behaviors that tend to be essential for success. Is it wrong to teach our students ways to be successful? I would hope not! In fact, I see that as my primary job - to make them successful. Do I think success should be defined in the exact same way for every person? Of course not! We are all unique and have different things to offer. All of this to say that I felt the author was entirely off-point. He missed the big picture up until the final few pages. I felt most of this read was a waste of my time. I would have rather read something that would have actually given me ways to truly help my students.

The only redeeming quality of the book is that it points out the struggles that many people go through. As teacher, I am already very aware of those struggles, but many people are not. For someone who may not realize how difficult it may be to be looked down upon by others in society, this could be an eye opener. If you are already sensitive to this, then I would offer up the advice to move on to another book.

[Alisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Absolutely wow. This is definitely the type of book that allows the reader to take away any number of messages. Yes, this book is about the potentially tragic ways schools/schooling harm children with any type of learning or physical disability. You will be outraged (and surprised) by the experiences these individuals have/had in schools; absolutely outraged. You will be horrified (and maybe not that surprised) by the response these individuals receive/received by some community members.

To me this book was about SO much more than all of this. It was about the search for identity. Troubling the idea of "normal". Accepting people for who they are, not what they are. For me the greatest message of the book was the importance of SEEING people. Not seeing people as something, just seeing them: who they are and what they have to offer, not who they aren't or what they lack.

The whole book is a pretty forceful reminder that we could all be more generous in the way we interact with strangers (verbally and non-verbally) and people who are not like us (physically, socially, genetically, academically, mentally). As a teacher (and a human being!) this book gave me a lot to think about.

I highly recommend this book with one considerable hesitation: the author writes very candidly and doesn't sugar-coat the retelling of conversations he had with people on the road. Translation: there is quite a bit of bad language. Decide for yourself. I don't regret reading this book.

[Lars Guthrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw Jonathan Mooney speak last year, and had a similar experience reading his second book. That is, he is so in- your-face and apparently random that I started out not wanting to accept other people's praiseworthy evaluations of him. But he grows on you. And this tour across America and through the history of diagnosing those with special needs who are stereotyped and shunted out of mainstream life on those instantly identifiable buses is worth a little stick-to-itness. Mooney's insistence on caring and seeing individuals as individuals are at the core of the values I hope educators, society and I try to follow. And he's honest about his own difficulties in keeping to such standards. Here's a quote I liked: "Our myth of who we are, who we should be, is actually created by categorizing people with disabilities. Disability is inherently a negation. In our culture, people with disabilities stand more for what they are not than what they are—not normal, not whole—a negation that calls into being its opposite: the normal. The normal looms over all of our lives, an impossible goal that we are told is possible if: if we sit still, if we but certain consumer goods, if we exercise, if we brush our teeth, if we…."

[Logan J · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the book in the beggining because Jonathan was explaining his experiences and his journey through life being special. Near the middle when he started turing the US it was the same thing go to a different town and visit a different person and go trough the same conversations and everything

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man whose early education label as "learning disabled" significantly altered his childhood and adolescence refurbishes a short bus and drives across the country, interviewing and spending time with "disabled" kids of all stripes. The author makes a fairly convincing argument that the medical model for the kinds of people he interviews is flawed, that there is nothing wrong with them, that they do not need to be fixed. At first I questioned the author's thesis. I wondered if his passion for his subject made him too biased to look at it clearly. But by the end of the book, I found myself pretty strongly on his side of things. Reading this book will likely change the way you view "normal" and should definitely change your perceptions of the "disbaled."

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting.

What is normal and what does it look like?

Author, Mooney, who had some special needs of his own, takes us on a journey around the country via a short bus (vehicle often used to transport children with disabilities). Along the way, we meet many individuals, some of whom have disabilities, either physical or intellectual, or both.

You can learn a lot from this book and their stories. Inspiring? Maybe, but in reality it's showing respect for a person(s) who is just a little bit different (not wrong) from me; just like anybody else.

Side Note: The information about Eugenics was intriguing and a lot scary!

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read if you are into Special Education. Mr. Mooney adds his personal experiences coupled with students he meets on a year long sojourn to paint a picture of what life in the Special Education system is like. A must read!

[Srosch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Until you have lived through the struggle of trying to regain normal or be normal this book may not speak to you. I on the other hand have felt the pull of trying to right myself. What Mooney does in this book encourages all of us to examine how we look at the world around us, especially those who are labeled as something different (development delay, transgender, autism, aspergers, and the like). Mooney buys a short bus and travels around the U.S. Sometimes lost, sometimes unsure of himself, but he keeps moving forward, which seems like a good plan for all of us.

[Sandi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could not get into this book. Hoped it contained some ideas of how to deal with with "labeled" kids in a better way but felt it mainly just criticized and belittled past efforts without any suggestions as to how to do things better.

[JulieK · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meditation on the meaning of "normal."

Update: I'm adding another star after the fact because I'm finding that the book is sticking with me in unexpected ways. I'm looking at people like the Asperger's-ish guy on my bus differently than I did before I read it.

[Hilary · Rating 1 out of 5]

I usually love intelligent memoirs, but this was so poorly written that after I read my assigned sections for our project, I stopped. Blergh. The concept is interesting, but he doesn't really GO anywhere with it (ironically, since he's traveling in a bus, but...) Totally disappointing.

[Annie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I quit reading almost halfway through. There are a few lines I highlighted, but too much uninteresting life stories in between.

[Jean Brazil · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave up on this one. Irritating instead of inspiring.

[Ted O. · Rating 1 out of 5]

55 pages was all I could subject myself to...

[Lexy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never realized the implications that a short bus, or a label, could have and the fear or discomfort that they could cause. As for the book;I liked it. I wanted to love it, but I couldn’t. Mooney is a good author and the book contains so many powerful stories concerning people living with disabilities. Ashley, Cookie, and Katie are some of my favorite people from the book for many different reasons that could never be fully explained in a book review. Mooney wrote their stories so well and I was hooked completely during those chapters.They were all powerful stories that really showed the messed up ways that society can act when confronted with disability.
One thing I disliked about the book was the way that Mooney often talks about himself and his difference from those with disabilities. He begins the book by saying that he “wasn’t like these kids” (6) and although he tries to fight this mindset throughout the book, I think that he often struggles with it from the reader’s perspective. In my own opinion, he also seemed to lack knowledge about intersectionality during some points in the book. I say that mainly because of the language he used in Cookie’s chapter. It may be a lack of knowledge on my part as I was not there when Mooney interviewed Cookie, and I of course do not know if Cookie requested Mooney to use male pronouns when discussing them. From the book though it seemed that Cookie was transitioning to a female, and so I found it interesting that Mooney referred to them as ‘he’ or ‘him’ throughout the chapter. He treated all of the people he wrote about fairly and kindly though. He often wrote about wanting to turn around just before meeting one of the people he’d chosen to
All together, I think that this book is an excellent story about Mooney’s travels and his own growth as he meets all of the people he included in the text. The book is inviting, tear-jerking, and Mooney will fully capture your attention through his sarcastic and personal writing style. I recommend this book for anyone who is curious about the lives of those who have disabilities or anyone who may have a disability and is looking to hear from others that they are not alone in their struggles with society.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The overall "message" (or theme) of the book is that people with disabilities have (rather than are) disabilities. There is, it's true, a certain inadvertent tendency in most of us to reduce people to their disability. Moody interweaves his own story of a dissatisfactory youth (he is ADD but was labeled stupid) with others' similar struggles: several parents of children he met on his journey were engaged in lawsuits against their child's school.

But Moody often takes a worthy idea too far, in suggesting, as he often does, that disability is more a social construction than a biological reality, and often gets quite "whiny" about this. He frequently lambasts those who try to "fix the disabled," such as believers in Cochlear implants for the deaf. (In a contradiction, he also chastizes teachers who don't recognize and accomodate for disabilities like ADHD, leaving us to wonder if we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't.)

Meeting the "characters" - an ADHD artist, a blind/deaf girl, a student with cerebral palsy confined to a wheelchair, etc - was interesting, but I never felt like I "got to know" any of them. In an irony, Moody's intent of letting us "get to know" the people behind the disaiblities backfires, because in the end, I felt like the only thing I DID get to know were their disabilities. The encounters were brief (one lasting only two pages) and Moody's "discussions" with the students were never really illuminating.

In the end, the saving grace of the book was the strong narrative and "story line" of it. Moody had an interesting concept and, while it never really delivered much of what was promised, it was interesting in its own right.

[Mira · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was anticipating more from this book than it fully delivered and maybe could have used some editing to tighten things up. The cross-country road trip was interesting to read in detail, but it moved around so much and deviated from something the author stated a few sentences prior that it became not only difficult to keep track but repetitive and long-winded.

Mooney was blunt about things in the book. He tackled what it means to be normal and how everyone in the world is a little weird and how everyone should be celebrated for their differences. Most of all, he looked at the prejudices people have against perceived others and the history which made dehumanizing others so easy. He was honest--he spoke about his discomfort with others who had disabilities, and how it took him time to see the beauty of other people that their families saw. And while I instinctively flinched at how callous his thoughts were for them, his thought are a reality that we can't hide from and sometimes the discomfort from that is something you sit and contemplate.

I loved the amount of love in this book. Mooney's thought may have been callous at times, but he wrote about so many people who loved themselves, who loved others, who were beloved by others, who created weird places for themselves, who created tribes of people for themselves. Love and connection was such a fundamental part of each story which was fascinating and heartening to see.

That's a lot of this book. Sit and contemplate. It was an interesting read, but not necessarily one I would have read if a class hadn't required it.