Tool to Use with Clients Reading "Paperboy"

By Vince Vawter
Author of Paperboy and Copyboy

Anytime I’ve been privileged to chat with Professor Ana Paula G. Mumy’s graduate students at the University of Kansas, I have found them thoroughly invested and dedicated to their chosen careers as speech pathologists.

They have always brought keen insights to the discussion of my book, Paperboy, an autobiographical novel about an 11-year-old boy facing a cruel world and a worrisome stutter. I’m not hesitant to admit that I probably learn more from the grad students than they learn from me.

So, I was more pleased than surprised when Clinical Professor Mumy asked me to take a look at a “clinical tool” created by her class to be used in conjunction with the reading of Paperboy. I had no doubt the tool would be good, but, to put it in a modern vernacular, “I was blown away.”

Ana Paula, graduate student Kellie Deutsch and the Class of 2022 at the University of Kansas have created a chapter-by-chapter “Book Club Clinical Tool” that explores every facet of the messages I attempted to convey in Paperboy on dealing with a stutter.

I have told countless audiences during the past eight years that my book would be a success if it made one young person who stutters feel a little less lonely. This brilliant and insightful tool from Ana Paula and her students leaves no doubt that Paperboy will meet its mission.

Download the Book Club Clinical Tool for Paperboy

Posted August 18, 2021

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Frank Wolf

This Virginian congressman has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1981. The longtime supporter of the Stuttering Foundation drew national attention to childhood stuttering in 2006 when he submitted an article about Tiger Woods from the SFA newsletter to the Congressional Record. The congressman is featured in the Stuttering Foundation's Famous People Who Stutter brochure.

Lewis Carroll

The recent Disney version of Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice in Wonderland, garnered a great deal of media hype. Even though the mainstream media has not made mention that Carroll was a person who stuttered, his family history gives credence to the discovery of the genetic link to stuttering. Carroll was born to parents who were first cousins; almost all of their eleven children, three girls and seven boys, struggled with stuttering past childhood.

Byron Pitts

Byron Pitts has brought much attention to stuttering with his memoir, Step Out on Nothing: How Faith and Family Helped Me Conquer Life’s Challenges, released in September, 2009. The book not only details his speech difficulties, but also his illiteracy until age 12 and his unstable family life. Pitts overcame the odds to become the chief national correspondent with ABC News.

Bob Love

Bob Love has dreamt about being a great public speaker since his early days in Bastrop Louisiana, even though, as a young man, he could barely put two words together, let alone speak a full sentence.

In spite of his severe stuttering disability, Bob Love, the son of a sharecropper, rose to become a Chicago Bulls NBA superstar, whose records were eventually surpassed by Michael Jordan. Throughout his entire athletic career, Bob Love kept his stuttering a secret from the fans who adored him, thinking he could do his “talking” on the basketball court.

Ken Venturi

As much of the nation watches the U.S. Open Golf Championship, it is impossible not to think about our late friend Ken Venturi. Ken overcame many challenges to win the Open at Congressional in 1964 and go on to become the voice of golf for more than three decades.

However, Ken faced no bigger obstacle than stuttering. Ken Venturi was a champion to those who stutter, going out of his way to share his personal experience when consulted by a colleague, friend, or child who stutters.