Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling

This woman showed me that not having arms didn’t hold her back from doing what she wanted in life. She didn’t have arms and did everything with her feet. I thought this was incredibly sad for the many children with limb differences, as everyone should be able to find stories that mirror their life experiences.īut Kyle passed away two weeks after he was injured, and I didn’t think about the lack of children’s literature featuring characters with limb differences again until several years later when I saw a video online of a woman taking care of her baby and working out at the gym.

Actually, at the time, I couldn’t find any. I tried to read as much as I could about life with missing limbs, and I discovered there were very few children’s books featuring characters with limb differences. Over the next couple of weeks, I thought a lot about what life would be like for Kyle with a missing arm.

The idea to write a story featuring a character with a limb difference was planted in my mind nearly a decade ago when I received a phone call about my cousin, Kyle, who was serving in Iraq. What inspired you to write INSIGNIFICANT EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF A CACTUS?.I’m delighted that author Dusti Bowling graciously answered a few questions for us about her debut novel, which has received multiple starred reviews. This novel evoked a tremendous amount of empathy, and I can’t wait to share it with young readers. I wondered what it felt like to be Aven or Connor as I went through my days. I found myself thinking about the book when I was away from it. Together, they try to puzzle out a mystery at the theme park. Aven befriends Connor, a boy who has significantly less confidence as he navigates life with physical and verbal tics from Tourette syndrome. I relished my time spent in the flowered ballet flats of Aven Green, a confident middle school girl who has to navigate a move to a new place - Stagecoach Pass, a rundown Western theme park in Arizona – without arms.īeing born without arms requires Aven to find different and sometimes more difficult ways of doing things, but she has supportive parents who always encourage her to manage things for herself. While all books invite you to walk in someone else’s shoes, certain ones accomplish that on a grand scale, like Dusti Bowling’s Insignifcant Events in the Life of a Cactus. One of the superpowers of books is helping readers grow their empathy skills.

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling