Rating: 
Summary: read this or elses
Review: I thought this book has exetremly well written.It grabs you from begining to the end.My only complant about this book has the first time i read the ending,you really have to think about the ending. After I thought abo
t it I liked it alot.Terry Trueman was done very good with this book.I would recomend this book to anybody who loves a good book
Rating:
Summary: stuck in neutral
Review: I liked this book! It is about a 14 year old boy who is totaly helpless. He can't even make his own eyes move. But he is very smart. He can remember everything he ever saw. But Shawn is scared thet his father is going to kill him. Another man's 2 year old son had the same problem as Shawn does and he killed his little boy out of love. Shawn wants to live but he has no way of communicating and telling his family that he can think and he wants to live. I didn't like the end of this book because the author leaves us to guess what happends on our own and we don't really know what happends at the end.
Rating: 
Summary: Boxed In
Review: My name is Shawn McDaniel.
I'm 14 years old.
I think my father is planning to kill me. I think this is an excellent book to read. It is about a boy with cerebral palsy because of a vein that burst in his brain when he was little. He can't move at all-nothing, not even his eyes. His brain, however, is highly active and aware. He can remember every single sound, smell, and billboard sign he ever saw. He has feelings he can't express, fears, doubts. People think he is a retarded vegetable, though, because he can't communicate or make even the slightest sound. He lives his entire life in a wheelchair, cut off and invisible to rest of the world as he watches his family's hectic everyday lives happen from what seems a long distance. But now he has an even bigger problem that he fears he will be unable to do anything about- he suspects his father is planning to kill him to end his painful seizures. Mr. McDaniel has had to watch his son's violent seizures for too long. He can't stand knowing he can do nothing to comfort Shawn. That's the reason he left the family. That's the reason he wrote his famous poem for Shawn. But what he doesn't know is that they aren't painful for Shawn- and Shawn must wait in frustrating anticipation for his father's decision. This is the story from the fascinating perspective of a teenager who exists quietly within the shadows of his mind.
Rating:
Summary: Stuck in Neutral
Review: I really liked this story and I liked the way the author told us his thoughts I think that if he would have told us what happened in the end and not make us wait to read the next book I would have liked it a lot better.thats why i only gave it 4 stars. I like the way that he is telling us about the way his family is struggling with his dieseise. I love the way the author descibes how his older brother would take care of him no matter what. Ijust really loved this book.
Rating: 
Summary: stuck in neutral review
Review: I really like the book Stuck In Neutral,it really tells you how hard life is with cerebral palsy.Life as Shawn can be really hard but yet fun.That's what I liked about this book.I liked how Shawn loved the way he is and that he accepted everything.The other thing I like about this book is that it can be sometimes educational about deseases and other things.This book has some parts that are sad and that's what made me interested in this book.I also like that Shawn likes his siezures even though it sometimes hurts.Heck,I wouldn't be able to last one second having a siezure.I really like this book and I recommend people to read this amazing yet sad book.
Rating:
Summary: An Eye Opener
Review: Exploring the inner life of Shawn in Stuck in Neutral was a treat. I have worked with many people who are severly and profoundly developmentally delayed. It was a treat to read about the hidden life of this young man. I especially enjoyed his fantasies about some of the women in his life - so natural for a 14 year old. I remember one little boy in my school years ago now - he was 6 at the time. We were after a lot of work able to give him a way to indicate yes and no and discovered that he knew a lot! I kept wishing that someone could do this for Shawn. This book is not just for teens and adolescents.
Rating: 
Summary: A book without plot
Review: First they invented the boneless chicken; now we have the plot-less book. I feel like the absolute Grinch That Stole Christmas criticizing a book that was written with such obviously good intentions, and that offers genuine insight into the plight of a person with cerebral palsy. And, to be fair, the main character is likeable, believable, and three-dimensional. But there is virtually no story. Maybe that's the point--how much story can there be for a kid with no actual contact with other people? There is no resolution, huh? Well, maybe so, but the book left me feeling frustrated by its rambling, pointless structure.
Rating:
Summary: Shawn's news
Review: This is a story about a fourteen-year-old kid; his name is Shawn McDaniel. He describes his life as one of those "good new-bad news" jokes.
The good news is a lot of things. He lives in Seattle and he loves it when it rains. He is the youngest kid in his family and he also loves his older brother and sister and thinks they "are pretty cool for a brother and sister"... Even with Shawn's condition, he is still very happy to be alive... I recommend this book to anyone who knows a family with this disease. It was an emotionally charged book with a knock out ending.
Rating:
Summary: The inconclusive ending [threw] me off.
Review: This was a great book, mostly. Shawn McDaniel has cerebral palsy really bad. He has a lot of seizures and no voluntary muscle control. Everyone thinks he's an idiot, a vegetable, because he can't communicate to them how smart he is. He can't even focus his eyes half the time. Shawn's voice left a strong impression and the story -- Shawn's fear that his father was going to kill him to "put him out of his misery" -- was original and very good. So why did you rate it a two out of five? you ask. Because the ending really made me mad. You never find out whether his dad killed him or not. It was like the author couldn't make up his mind and was like "aw, the heck with it". The ending left me hanging, with a bad taste in my mouth. It was very good but due to the last chapter I could not honestly recommend it to anybody.
Rating:
Summary: Ruined by the inconclusive ending
Review: I think that the book is interesting in its portrayal of someome who, because he is physically unable to communicate, is believed also to be unable to think. Certainly the story is a salutary warning to anyone who thinks that a communication disorder is equivalent to having nothing to communicate. There are parts of the book which are very well-written and powerful. However, I think that the book is fatally marred from both a literary and an emotional point of view by its inconclusive ending. The issue of whether a boy is going to be killed buy his own father is so fundamental that leaving it up in the air is seriously damaging to the book. I understand that inconclusive endings are sometimes a literary device; I just feel that doing so in a book of this sort, especially one intended for young readers, is inappropriate, and may lead to the readers protecting themselves emotionally by treating it as just a case study in ethics, and ignoring Shawn's humanity: surely the complete opposite of the book's presumable purpose. I am also concerned about the atmosphere created of the young disabled character's total powerlessness in the hands of adults; and the fact that this aspect is not directly questioned. One gets the impression that the father's thoughts of killing his son are wrong in this case; but not that it is wrong or unnatural for an adult to have that much power over their child (or over anyone). I think that the book may therefore appeal to young people who do feel powerless and are frustrated by it; but that the emphasis on powerlessness may ultimately be corrosive. It would be particularly dangerous if it leads to the impression that disabled people must invariably be totally under other people's power. I realize that some of my comments may sound confused; but the book's whole message is confused. It is a strange book; possibly of interest to adults, especially those who are interested in
books that use defiance of literary conventions, such as plot resolution, as a literary device in itself. I don't think that it has much to offer young people.
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