How It Feels to Live with a Physical Disability

This is the latest volume in the most recent series of books by photographer-turned-chronicler Krementz, who created a virtual cottage industry in wish-fulfillment fantasies with her first series ( A Very Young Dancer/Skater/Skier ). Her How It Feels books accomplish the opposite: they make situations of everyday adversity and misfortune real to young readers. Here, the able-bodied majority can overcome the handicaps of ignorance by reading along as 12 since it's a book, not an audio book young people who have physical disabilities tell the true stories of their lives. The children, ages six to 16, share their anger and joy as they recount the burdens, frustrations and triumphs of their days. Each describes his or her experiences clarity and often with insight. One 13-year-old, explaining why he doesn't like to use crutches, says, ``they make me feel more handicapped than I want to feel.''122 ``If I can do anything to change people's attitudes about the physically challenged, that's more rewarding to me than winning medals,'' says Sarah, a gold medalist in the 1987 New York State Games for the Physically Challenged90, 84 . Krementz allows the children, in their own words, to teach the reader how to see them. Her photographs document what is visible, but it's the verbal testimony that provides the more profound and fuller portrait. Author tour; first serial to Good Housekeeping. (Apr.)