Title: The First Thing About You
Author: Chaz Hayden
Book Type: Novel
Series: N/A
Series Number: N/A
Genre: Romance, Realistic, Contemporary
Age: Young Adult
Disability: SMA | Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Wheelchair User
LGBTQ+: N/A
Published: 2020
Setting: USA
[ID: A book cover. The background is composed of several hundred blue, dark blue, yellow, green, pink, red and orange dots. The title “The First Thing About You” is written in large white capitals and stretches from the top to the bottom of the cover. The author’s name “Chaz Hayden” is written in the lower left corner, in small white capitals. /end]
Content Warning:
- Ableism
- Alcoholism
- Bullying
- Death
- Vomit
- Medical Content
- References to Drug Use
- Discussions of Overdosing
- Emotional Abuse
Summary:
A high school student with spinal muscular atrophy is determined to reinvent himself.
When fifteen-year-old Harris moves with his family from California (home of beautiful-but-inaccessible beaches) to New Jersey (home of some much-hyped pizza and bagels), he’s determined to be known as more than just the kid in the powered wheelchair. Armed with his favorite getting-to-know-you question (“What’s your favorite color?”), he’ll weed out the incompatible people—the greens and the purples, people who are too close to his own blue to make for good friends—and surround himself with outgoing yellows, adventurous oranges, and even thrilling reds. But first things first: he needs to find a new nurse, stat, so that his mom doesn’t have to keep accompanying him to school.
Enter Miranda, a young nursing student who graduated from Harris’s new high school. Beautiful, confident, and the perfect blend of orange and red, Miranda sees Harris for who he really is—funny, smart, and totally worthy of the affections of Nory Fischer, the cute girl who’s in most of his classes. With Miranda at his side, Harris soon befriends geeky Zander (yellow) and even makes headway with Nory (who stubbornly refuses to reveal her favorite color). But Miranda is fighting her own demons, and Harris starts to wonder if she truly has his best interests at heart.
Notes:
Chaz Hayden, the author, also has Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
There is an audiobook.
There is an ebook/Kindle edition.
Archivist Comments:
I like the idea of “colour psychology” that’s introduced here. I find it quite interesting and I think it’s one of the things that might make this book memorable.
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