Review: IN A PICKLE OVER PANDAS by Melanie S. Weiss

In A Pickle Over PANDAS by Melanie S. Weiss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this picture book on PANDAS mainly as research to see how picture books tackle medical issues such as PANDAS and the level of detail into which they go into. I myself am an adult with PANS (similar to PANDAS) and I've written a lot of articles on my experiences with PANS, but these are all aimed at adults. So I was interested to see how a children's picture book would tackle it.

This book does go into a lot of detail about PANDAS--more than I thought it would do for this age range, but it is all necessary and important info (from my perspective as an adult). However, I do wonder if it's really suitable for children of the intended age range for the readership. It does get very technical, and it does have some pretty scary illustrations representing the mental health symptoms that PANDAS can cause. 

But, then again, if a parent is buying this for their child, chances are the child is going to have PANDAS and the book is being used as a tool to help explain the illness to the child, so the child would already be familiar with the symptoms. Therefore I think this book is more suitable for children who already have PANDAS rather than children who don't. But it is still important reading for parents as the more knowledge they have of neuropsychiatric disorders such as PANDAS and PANS the better, especially when these disorders are often misdiagnosed.

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