Window Boy

Crazy about basketball, twelve-year-old Sam Davis longs to be a part of the team that practices outside his window. But Sam's different from the other boys: he has cerebral palsy. Confined to a wheelchair, Sam's never touched a basketball. He's never even been to school. It's 1968, and only a few enlightened educators understand that a boy like Sam might have a brain that's as good as anybody else's. When the Stirling Junior High principal finally agrees to let Sam enter sixth grade, Sam gets his chance to move into the world beyond his window. All Sam knows about school, he's learned from Miss Perkins, the English lady who cleans his apartment. Perkins spends hours reading to Sam about Winston Churchill. Sam knows so much about him that Winnie— as they call him—starts talking to Sam in his head. At first, Sam doesn't understand what a boy in a wheelchair has in common with one of the world's greatest leaders, but Winnie says, Don't you see Sam? I was just a boy...