Do you remember watching the movie The Sixth Sense? And when, at the end, you realized that the boy, Cole, had been seeing dead people all along, it changed your experience of the entire movie? (At least that's how it was for me.) I didn't see the twist coming at all, and I loved it.
In Language Arts, we meet Cody and his family. Cody was a happy little boy. He was developing normally until he started to lose language. His parents, Charles and Alison, took him to specialist after specialist to find out what happened and to try to help him get better.
Cody doesn't get better. Shortly after the birth of Cody's sister, Emmy, Charles and Alison's marriage deteriorates. As Cody gets older, and ages out of the system that can provide care for him, Charles and Alison have to work together to find a suitable living situation for him.
We see everything as Charles and Emmy experience this. Kallos weaves together this family's struggle, including back story around Charles, with Charles as a child befriending an autistic classmate, language arts, and, interestingly, Palmer handwriting. Language Arts felt a little melancholy, heavy with this family's desperation to try to help Cody as well as deal with deteriorating relationships.
I was engaged in the story as it was, and then a Sixth Sense kind of twist came at the end that made me go back and reread passages of the book to see how she did it. SO well done!
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