Then We’ll Be Happy

Sam is seventeen. He is obsessed with football but continually frustrated. He has cerebral palsy and is a full-time power wheelchair user. His latest disappointment is that, at the last minute, he is not able to go on a much-anticipated school trip. The school bus still has no wheelchair access despite it having been promised by the head teacher a year before. The reason: funding. Disability access is not seen as a priority.

Sam is understandably livid. He decides to mount a music concert to raise funds for an accessible bus and to bring awareness to wider disability-related issues. Can he and the team of people he trusts pull a concert off? That is the basic premise of the book but so many wider issues related to disability such as the use of hoists for transfers and the frustration of having to arrange to do everything you want to do only with the help of other people are explored.

One of Carrigan’s many achievements is that he includes both the social and medical models of disability in terms that young people both disabled and non-disabled can understand. This is rare in a YA book but is essential to understanding disability issues and their implications. Sam is three dimensional, cheeky and believable.

If you know a disabled young person, this is the book for them. There are numerous occasions when they will laugh out loud.