Reach for the Moon by Abeel, Samantha; Murphy, Charles R. Illustrator and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at AbeBooks.com. Samantha Abeel, author of My Thirteenth Winter: A Memoir, on LibraryThing. This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising.

Samantha Abeel is an enthusiastic 16-year-old who has no problem preparing for national book tours, reading her poetry at autograph sessions, appearing on talk radio or even addressing educational organizations.

What energizes her is the opportunity to explain to any audience what it's like to be simultaneously learning disabled and gifted. She knows the subject well. She describes most of her educational experience as 'a nightmare' because she can't deal with concepts of numbers or time. On the other hand, the discovery that she has unusual talent as a writer launched Samantha as a published poet, with a growing national reputation.

'Reach for the Moon,' the collection of poems she wrote at age 13, side by side with the vivid watercolors of northern Michigan artist Charlie Murphy, is now in its third commercial printing. The success of the collection has brought Samantha many invitations to tell her story, and Saturday she'll be in Chicago at the Great Lakes Booksellers Association convention, where she'll present a reading. That evening she's scheduled to appear on WGN radio's kids' talk show '24/7'.

Flipping her long dark hair off her face, Samantha smiles disarmingly as she describes the stomachaches, tears and anxiety she dealt with every school day until she was diagnosed as learning disabled. When she was placed simultaneously in special-education classes and advanced English because a teacher recognized her unusual ability with language, Samantha blossomed.

'I really think that this message needs to be said,' she says seriously. 'There are a lot of learning-disabled kids falling through the cracks.

'And, I love it,' she admits. 'I love it when people come up to me at book signings and tell me their stories about people with (learning disabilities) or that they are (learning disabled) themselves.'

Samantha's often-contradictory story began emerging with the first day of kindergarten. Her mother, Elizabeth, knew that her talkative, bright child, who had the uncanny ability to memorize the entire screenplay of 'Star Wars' at age 4, was destined to be an academic star.

Instead, teachers told Elizabeth and her husband, David, that their daughter was a quiet, withdrawn student. When faced with numbers, Samantha hit the wall. She couldn't comprehend simple concepts.

All Samantha recalls of school from kindergarten through the 'nightmare of 6th grade' is anxiety and stomachaches.

'When she was in 2nd grade,' her mother says, 'I'd sit on the bed with her for hours holding up flash cards, trying patiently to communicate the concept of five minus three. Two hours later, we'd both be in tears.

'I went through the wringer trying to get help.'

Middle school was worse than elementary.

'Learning-disabled students learn to compensate,' Samantha says. 'People move in a herd mentality. In elementary school, I didn't have to tell time, because everyone went to lunch when it was noon.

'We create a web of supporting strings. Moving into a new environment is like having your cobweb wiped away, as if someone sprayed it down with a hose.

'My 6th grade teacher never knew I couldn't tell time. But in 7th grade, I suddenly had six new teachers who didn't know me. I had two locker combinations to deal with. I had six minutes between classes, and I didn't know what six minutes felt like. I couldn't even read the room numbers on the doors.'

Then teacher Roberta Williams called Elizabeth Abeel.

'Do you know about your daughter?' she asked.

Abeel braced herself for more bad news, but instead Williams talked of Samantha's extraordinary talent, not her disabilities.

Williams nurtured Samantha's writing talents, gave her the extra time she needed to complete assignments and encouraged her to use the word processor with spell check to deal with writing mechanics. The following summer the Abeels asked Williams to be Samantha's writing coach.

Artist friend Murphy agreed that Samantha could use his highly symbolic watercolors for inspiration. Samantha began with Murphy's painting 'The Cloak.'

'It was so powerful,' she remembers. 'I put on a neat tape and crawled inside the painting. That's how I write. I crawl inside and become what I am writing.

'I make a checklist in my mind. If I am writing a poem about a tree, for example, I ask `What does my bark feel like?' `What are the birds doing?' `How do my leaves feel?' '

And she reads her works out loud as she revises. 'I love the sound of words, the rhythms.'

When Samantha presented Murphy with her first poem, Murphy says: 'It sealed the fate. She had touched all the symbols in the painting.'

Samantha Abeel Family

The finished poems were so stunning that Williams, Samantha's parents and Murphy agreed the project could not just be pasted together and eventually forgotten. They scraped together the money for a self-published, full-color run of 3,000 hardcover copies of the collection of poems and paintings, then titled 'What Was Once White.'

'What Was Once White,' published in May 1993, sold out by July. The book had been circulated by friends, picked up by organizations for the learning disabled and sold in art galleries and bookstores across the U.S.

Susan Baum, a nationally known consultant on education for gifted and learning-disabled children, says, 'This is an inspiration to all students who are blessed with a unique gift, but who also experience difficulties in learning.'

'The book stands on its own as an art book,' says Nancy Koucky, owner of art galleries in Charlevoix, Mich., and Naples, Fla. 'Murphy's art is sophisticated, the poetry is wonderful.'

'We were blown out of the water by the response,' says Elizabeth Abeel. 'By July we were talking seriously with Pfeifer-Hamilton Publishers in Duluth.'

Pfeifer-Hamilton, which renamed the book 'Reach for the Moon,' sold out its first printing of 10,000 within three weeks of its printing in June. Two more printings of 10,000 and 20,000 followed, and publisher's spokesmen say 20,000 copies have been sold to wholesalers, retailers and individuals.

This year 'Reach for the Moon' won the Margo Marek Award from the national Orton Dyslexia Society. In September it won the 1994 MidAmerican Publishers Association's Best Children's Book award, and it has been nominated by the American Library Association for the Best Book for Young Adults award for 1995.

Samantha, a junior at Traverse City High School, describes all the attention as a mixed blessing.

'It's a learning experience, and I get to meet a lot of really neat people,' she says. But, she adds: 'All the publicity describes me as a 2-D person: learning disabled and gifted. They don't realize I walk the dog, go to school, have friends.

'It makes me seem flatter than a pancake,' she says, laughing.

Yet she keeps writing, 'a little every day. There's a couple more poems floating in my head. Poetry will always be a part of my life.'

And she is a willing advocate for learning-disabled students.

'Ninety-nine percent of the learning-disabled kids are never diagnosed. I tell parents they must get involved.

'And I tell kids to work on self-advocacy. I tell them to tell teachers if they are learning disabled. To admit that is an incredible feat.

Samantha Abeel My Thirteenth Winter

'A kid who admits he's learning disabled is a real hero.'