SuitabookA Quiet Kind of Thunder
Sara Barnard
- Reading
- Read alongside the young person rather than treating recovery as the main measure of progress. Pause around panic, treatment, friendship strain or intimacy, and invite their interpretation without demanding personal disclosure.
- Themes
- Communication and disability: Steffi and Rhys develop a relationship using several communication methods, while Steffi learns that her experience does not fully represent Rhys’s. The story presents communication as varied and negotiated, rather than treating speech or hearing as the only valuable forms.
- Anxiety and change: Steffi receives cognitive behavioural therapy and medication while trying to manage communication in school and elsewhere. The book presents this mainly as information or explanation.
- Romance and friendship: Steffi’s relationship with Rhys develops from friendship, while her changing social life affects her longstanding friendship with Tem. Relationships are shown as meaningful but imperfect, involving misunderstandings, mistakes and a degree of independence rather than rescue.
- Worth knowing
- Consider whether the treatment of anxiety, selective mutism, deafness, medication and cognitive behavioural therapy fits your child’s circumstances. The book includes panic attacks and sexual content within the romance.