This is a very special post and is a story that will inspire any parent!
During the past nine months Angela has been very busy writing short stories. She has always been passionate about reading and enjoys acting out her favourite characters from the books she reads. What began as something to encourage her with writing, evolved into a much bigger project! Angela’s parents enjoyed her stories so much and realized that this recently developing ability with creative writing should be celebrated, so they decided to publish 20 of her best stories. What is more poignant to this story is that Angela has Down syndrome.
The Adventures of Edmond and Martha – by Angela Bettoni
Angela has always been a keen reader, which has obviously had an impact on her imagination and creativity, so to draw on these skills and create her own stories, is truly inspiring for someone so young.
Editing the series of stories has been kept to a minimum, so as to give a true idea of her writing. The stories themselves are amusing due to her great sense of humor! Each chapter is preceded by a scanned page of the original handwriting. The book is already on sale and can be obtained from Amazon priced £8.
Background
Angela Bettoni is nine years old. She has had her fair share of medical problems, including heart surgery at 5 months to correct a VSD, ASD and PDA. She has also had pneumonia, bronchiolitis, innumerable chest infections and grommets. However, Angela has always been a very determined child, whose main love has been books from the time she was a year old!
Angela enjoys reading books by Enid Blyton, the “Naughtiest Girl” series; “Teddy Robinson”; “My naughty little sister” as well as picture books. Even though Angela is 9, her parents still make a point of reading to her at night and the Railway Children is currently taking its turn. Even when Angela was younger she had no problem remembering her stories. Because of this, or maybe to reinforce this, her parents came up with the idea for a game named ‘more books’ when travelling. They would quote a line from a book Angela had read then she would tell them which book it came from. What a great idea to reinforce thinking and memory ability!”
Because Angela also loves pretending, often in the Bettoni household one will have the pleasure of watching “Matilda”, “Ariel” or “Sophie” from Mamma Mia, performing, and because Angela pretty much runs these performances, her parents are also assigned roles and have to play along! When they hear “Lets’ pretend…” It’s show time…….!
In 2008 the Bettoni family moved to Rome, to a climate more conducive to Angela’s respiratory condition. They found a small British mainstream school where she joined a class (below her age group) of 15 children. Angela’s language work – reading, writing and comprehension – is at the level of her classmates.
Like many children with Down syndrome, Angela has struggled with mathematics. I first heard about Angela when her school contacted me to discuss using the Stern math’s programme to help develop Angela’s ability with maths. I was delighted to receive a report on her progress and achievement six months later.
Regular readers of my blogs will recall a post highlighting progress with a pupil with Down syndrome, this is Angela!
Tags: Down syndrome
Maths Extra Blog 
October 18, 2010 at 7:34 pm |
This is a very inspiring, lovely story! I can’t help thinking that I’d want to take up some of Angela’s family’s creativity-and-memory-boosting ideas! I shall also try to get hold of a copy of her book!
Best wishes to Angela in her writing journey!