Reviews for Pediatric Gait: A New Millennium in Clinical Care and Motion Analysis Technology

The average rating for Pediatric Gait: A New Millennium in Clinical Care and Motion Analysis Technology based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-02-08 00:00:00 Miguel Mendoza Haven't read this one in years either, but thinking tonight about how much I love Diana Wynne Jones and remember this being another one of my favorites (not as good as Fire & Hemlock, though). This Diana Wynne Jones woman is a frikkin' GENIUS. IMO these are the greatest kids' books EVER WRITTEN. This one starts out when this kid who lives in some sort of strange time and place that never actually existed stumbles upon a group of Them (Them being hooded, sinister gamers who are possibly among the most haunting figures in kid lit due to horrific combination of general creepiness and very disturbing model of cruel and indifferent gods). They catch the kid spying on Them while they're playing, and as punishment cast him out into a collection of alternate worlds, which it turns out are all these alternate realities manipulated by Them, as Their form of amusing game. Because the kid discovered the players behind the curtain, he is forced to become a Homeward Bounder, doomed to scramble around between the worlds, trying to find his way back to his own home. As the story goes on, you start to get the feeling this might be trickier than originally thought, as the kid begins to encounter other Homeward Bounders, including the Flying Dutchman and the Wandering Jew, who have been at this homeward bounding for quite some time..... Okay, so DIANA WYNNE JONES IS A GODDAMN GENIUS, AND I THINK SHE WRITES THE BEST ENDINGS EVER AND I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS. It is not just about how she blends traditional legends and mythology with her own crazy made-up ideas and recurring worlds/characters (I was probably 14 before I realized Guy Fawkes Day was not Jones's own invention -- whoopsie!). It is also about her ability to write this chaotic, artistic, meaningful literature for children. At the end of this book (I'm spoiling here! So lookout!), the characters suddenly confront the significance of the anchors that They use throughout the book as a sort of symbol. This is a really important point in the plot, because it's only then that the protagonist has the revelation that "hope is an anchor" -- that is, that hope and faith in the future is a prison, a deceptive trap being used to enslave the Homeward Bounders and to keep in place the nefarious system of worlds They've established. Isn't that SO COOL??? Okay, maybe I wouldn't consider that such a profound message if I found it in a grownup book I'd be reading today, but for kids' fantasy fiction, that is some pretty heady stuff, am I right??! Hope is an anchor! It keeps you in chains! The way to become liberated is to abandon all your hopes and optimistic expectations, as only then you can really be free!!! That is just such a terrific message for kids to learn early on, especially in such a very lovely and entertaining format. GOD I love this writer. I wish I could meet her someday, but I don't really know what I would say. I've got to go back and read these all again, but they're all at my mom's in California, and if my lovely out-of-print/first-edition hardcovers got lost in the mail, I'd have a terrible nervous breakdown for sure and never recover.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-07-15 00:00:00 Suzanne Flewelling In her twelfth published novel, Diana Wynne Jones again does something new; The Homeward Bounders has a little bit of Dogsbody, a little bit of Power of Three, but mostly it's just itself. Young Jamie goes poking around where he shouldn't and is found by Them, mysterious cloaked creatures who appear to be playing an enormous strategy game with the world--and they deal with Jamie's intrusion by making him a Homeward Bounder. Now Jamie is forced to travel between worlds, pulled by an insistent demand he can't predict, with the promise that if he can find his way Home he'll be allowed to stay. As he travels for months and years without aging, Jamie visits hundreds of worlds with hundreds of societies, some pleasant, some hostile, never allowed to stay long enough to make a home, holding on to just the tiniest hope that he will return Home someday. While the varying societies Jamie visits are fascinating (DWJ was endlessly creative when it came to making new worlds) this book is very much about people and how they treat each other. Jamie's experiences make him cynical, naturally, and when he finally acquires some companions, he's unable at first to trust them or see them as anything but burdens. Helen Haras-uquara has her own issues, and Joris the demon hunter can't seem to stop talking about his "owner," the great demon hunter Konstam. That the three of them can become friends at all is due to DWJ's understanding of how people work. Their relationships are prickly, slow-growing things, but they do grow in ways dictated by who each of them are. As a role-playing gamer, I love the way that wargaming comes into the story. Adam, an enemy turned friend (something we'll see again in other DWJ books, particularly Archer's Goon) provides the key to defeating Them through his and his father's enormous wargame terrain. While the other characters have supernatural abilities that let them fight their unseen enemy, Adam and his sister provide support in other ways, particularly through knowledge. The revelation of how They are playing their game and what it will take for Jamie and the others to defeat them is complicated, typical for a DWJ novel. There's never anything simple about her solutions, and in this case understanding it requires a way of thinking about the world that reminds me of the ending of Fire and Hemlock--if one thing must be true, then another can't be. Jamie's solution to the problem hinges both on his ignorance (knowing who Prometheus is would have ruined everything) and his profound understanding of the puzzle. He sacrifices everything to keep Them from returning to power, and the final sentence of the novel makes me cry every time I read it.