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WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE A CHAIR
memoir & children's book
CHILDREN'S BOOK
A bold story of self-discovery
Vo wanted to believe that if she were a chair, she could change the world.
She wanted to believe that she could choose that path for herself.
Vo is a thinker and a creator and knows that she doesn't want a grumpy grown-up job. She wants to change the world, and she knows just how she’s going to do it. “When I grow up I want to be a chair!” Vo proclaims. Others don’t understand. Why would she want to be sat on? Where would she sleep? Who would want to be a chair?
Vo believes her chair makes her world a better place, so being a chair will make the whole world even better, right? When Vo faces the path ahead of her, she can see that there may be more to her wish than she ever understood. Join Vo as she discovers that just one part of her identity doesn’t have to define her whole future, but it does give her the power to be so much more.​
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Lively text written by Ryan Rae Harbuck, who wrote the award-winning and critically acclaimed adult memoir of the same name about her experience becoming a wheelchair user as a teenager after a car accident.
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Vibrant, quirky art illustrated by debut picture book illustrator Barry Lee who draws on their own experience of living with a disability.
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Representation of lived experience using a mobility device told through the eyes of Vo, a unique, unforgettable character.
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MEMOIR
HER STORY HAS (NOT) DEFINED HER.
From where she sat, her perspective of the world was both quite ordinary and rivetingly extraordinary—from a paralyzing car accident in her teens to traveling overseas on a journey of self-reflection to becoming a mom. Throughout everything she experienced, she fervently believed in following her given path.
She wanted to trust its trajectory. She wanted to be sure.
HER STORY IS NOT ABOUT A CHAIR.
Her story is about her strengths and how they rose out of her instinctive vulnerabilities.
Her story is about her struggles and how they became her victories.
Her story is about being willing to hold it all, for herself and the whole of her world.
Everyone has a chair. That thing you are bound to or unwillingly defines you. An element that makes you different from the rest. One that you have little choice in the matter.
What’s YOUR chair?
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Audiobook Available on Audible

When I Grow up I Want to Be a Chair​: A Memoir
By: Ryan Rae Harbuck
Narrated by: Chantelle Theocharidis
Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
Release: December 28, 2022
When Ryan Rae Harbuck survived a harrowing accident at age 16, her mobility may have been limited, but her ability to reprioritize her life and flourish had not. Any one of us can learn from and appreciate this raw, often humorous, and compelling read. Now if only someone had thought to turn each of her chairs into thrones.
Susan Triemert,
author of Guess What's Different

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