A Kind of Spark

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, ableism, and bullying.

In A Kind of Spark, the protagonist, who has autism, experiences intense displays of prejudice and injustice from peers and authority figures alike, and her everyday experience of the world includes enduring frequent bullying from those whose responsibility is to help her and protect her from such mistreatment. The novel explicitly emphasizes this systemic injustice by opening with the scene in which Addie’s teacher, Ms. Murphy, tears up the protagonist’s handwritten story and berates her for messy handwriting, labeling her “lazy” and failing to realize that Addie’s handwriting is a side effect of her challenges with motor skills. The incident also introduces the intensity of Addie’s sensory differences, especially when she observes, “The sound of the paper being torn is overly loud. Right in my ears. The characters in the story I was writing beg her to stop, but she doesn’t” (7). Addie’s visceral reaction to her teacher’s misguided scolding highlights the varied manifestations of the protagonist’s autism, illustrating her differences in sensory perception and employing personification to show her emotional connection to the characters in her shredded story.