Margaret's Moves

by Berniece Rabe, Julie Downing (Illustrator)

Nine-year-old Margaret, confined to a wheelchair by spina bifida, longs for a new, lightweight "sportsmodel" chair so that she can speed around as fast as the athletic brother with whom she has an ongoing rivalry.

Genres: Middle Grade, Disability

112 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1988

About the author

While growing up in a large sharecropping family in Missouri during the Depression, Berniece Rabe Tryand practiced telling stories to herself. When she was 40, a teacher at Elgin Community College inspired her to use those storytelling skills to become an author, leading her to write 17 books, several of which won awards.

Ms. Tryand’s 1978 book “The Orphans” (Dutton Juvenile) won the Society of Midland Authors award for best children’s nonfiction. Ms. Tryand, who wrote under the name Berniece Rabe, also was nominated five times for the American Library Association’s Newbery Medal and won the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ Golden Kite award, the National Children’s Choice Award and two Best of the Decade awards.

Ms. Tryand met her first husband, Walter Henry Rabe, in Panama during World War II while she was modeling a line of fashions and he was in the Army. They were married in 1946 and organized the first Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregation in Elgin. Walter Rabe died in 2005 after a 59-year-marriage, and Ms. Tryand married James Tryand of Plano in 2009.

She is survived by James Tryand; her three sons Alan, Brian and Clay Rabe; her daughter Dara Rabe Sandland; 10 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read this as a child and it stuck with me for a long time afterwards. Margaret is determined to save up the money for a canopy bed and be able to keep up with her older brother Rusty, which is hard to do as she is now confined to a wheelchair. But she doesn't give up.

[Debbi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This woman was a friend and an early mentor. I decided to buy all of her books and read them in sequence. What an interesting experience! I love her style--clear and age-appropriate, but she doesn't "talk down" to anyone. Those that echo her childhood are captivating. Those that speak to children in her life are tender. All have funny moments, real conflicts, and resolution. It was like talking to her again. Thank you, Berniece.