Epilepsy Awareness and Purple Day

Bookscoops is again hosting a challenge for Purple Day and I'm a excited to participate this year as well. Purple Day is March 26th and is a worldwide campaign to help raise awareness for those who are affected by epilepsy, or seizure disorders. Here's a little information that I'd like to share from the Bookscoops post.

"We wanted to raise awareness about epilepsy because it is the second most common reason people see a neurologist behind migraine. Epilepsy affects 50 million people world wide and about 3 million people living in the United States have epilepsy. More people have this condition than multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy and Parkinson’s disease combined and every year more people will die of epilepsy than breast cancer. Unfortunately, a lot of myths and false ideas are still being perpetuated about epilepsy (such as it is a mental condition or that epilepsy is contagious). Some of these misconceptions have caused many people to become isolated and live in fear and shame that someone will find out about their condition and many people have faced discrimination based on their medical diagnosis."

There are several ways to participate in the challenge and this is what I plan on doing.

1. Wear purple on Purple Day and tell people why.


2. Post a review of When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, which has a character with epilepsy.


3. Post about our family's experience with epilepsy.


4. Read and post a review of The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky who is known to have had epilepsy. (Hopefully I can get this one done.)

I'll try to figure out some more things I can do but I'm already a little late in starting. The challenge ends March 27th but hopefully you too can do something to participate. There is a prize drawing for participants: two books, When You Reach Me and The Day Glo Brothers by Chris Barton.