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  • Published: 1 November 2011
  • ISBN: 9781869798703
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 253

Wednesday's Child



A unique and compulsive insight that will make you weep - and laugh.

Entertaining, sad, funny, thought-provoking - and ultimately uplifting - this is a novel based on the life of an exceptional man, who happened to be intellectually handicapped.

Inspired by the life of the author's intellectually handicapped brother, Ronald Downes, this novel is written in Ronnie's voice as he talks about important things. It's also about him needing all the looking after he can be getting, as we travel with this innocent abroad through an increasingly complex special school, from where eventually - having learnt about indee-pend-dancing - our hero graduates. He spends his middle years adapting to life with Mother, and then takes a further journey, this time twelve years living with 'Sissy' and her family.

  • Published: 1 November 2011
  • ISBN: 9781869798703
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 253

About the author

Val Bird

Val Bird is the author of one adult novel, Wednesday’s Child, and four novels for children: the Ozzie Kingsford series. Wednesday’s Child is the story of an exceptional man who happens to be intellectually disabled, and was inspired by time she spent as a caregiver for her brother, Robert Downes. ‘It glitters and shines, and is great fun. As Ronnie might put it, it deserves to be “fay-mouse” ’ (Margie Thomson in The New Zealand Herald). Five (and a bit) Days in the Life of Ozzie Kingsford was nominated for the 2009 New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and was listed as a 2009 Storylines Notable Junior Fiction Book.