The Glass Boy is a character from a fairy tale written by Pasqualino, a ten-year-old boy with physical disabilities in the fifth grade. Pasqualino writes using a special electronic machine with a large, widely spaced keyboard. This allows him to overcome the difficulty of coordinating his movements and to avoid relying on contracted muscles. In his tale, he describes a fragile, insecure character so transparent that he cannot protect his secrets or his inner life—a caricature of a man whose difference sometimes makes people laugh and sometimes frightens them as if he were a ghost. The allegory helps us understand many boys like Pasqualino, whose struggles are plain to those around them, yet who often behave in ways that seem puzzling or out of place.
The two authors, developmental psychologists, mean to guide readers toward this understanding. Giovanna Astaldi spent many years working and researching the schooling of children with cerebral palsy, while Maria Carmela Barbiero, a professor at the University of Naples, has long worked in the field of child neuropsychiatry. If, as they argue, the key words for entering the world of disability are trust, understanding, and tolerance, then through this book they offer one more: knowledge.
"The Glass Boy" should be read by all young people from middle school onward. It deserves a place in school curricula. With clear, straightforward language and rigorous scientific precision, the authors present the reader with various types of disability and their genetic, prenatal, perinatal, and childhood causes. What becomes clear is that beyond the disadvantages he faces, the person with a disability "is a human being—not a genetic anomaly or a brain injury or some organic damage."
What matters is that he be given the chance to put his abilities to use, despite his disadvantage. Exactly as it is for Pasqualino, the creator of the Glass Boy.
- Natalia Livi, 1991