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Beany Brain #97: Fingers in the Sparkle Jar (a book review) + What Time Is Good for You?

Beany Brain #97: Fingers in the Sparkle Jar (a book review) + What Time Is Good for You?

Abigail Munday
June 10, 2026

Beany Brain: loving our jumping-bean brains!

Welcome to this issue of the Beany Brain! I hope today’s newsletter will bounce us up as we contemplate the upsides and challenges of being neurodivergent, a little beauty, some creativity, and just general yeehawesomeness.

Beany Brain: loving our jumping-bean brains!
- Welcome to this issue of the Beany Brain! I hope t …
Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir by Chris Pack …

Photo by Abigail Munday

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir by Chris Packham

Violence.
Gore.
Blood.
Bullying.
Beauty.
Poetry.
Autism.

All the things in this book.

As an ND person myself, I’m very sensitive to intense scenes. In a movie theater, I’d hide my face. At home, I’d hide behind the sofa when I was a kid if the Incredible Hulk came on screen. When Jacques Cousteau was diving, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

In a book, I can vividly see every detail in my imagination. And for decades afterward.

Chris Packham! Do you remember when I wrote about him here in Beany Brain #92? I said he’s an autistic scientist who appears on fantastic UK TV shows like Springwatch, he’s created a very good documentary about autism, and he’s an author and a spokesperson for ND (neurodivergent) folks.

I also happened to mention that I’d love to read his memoir, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar. One of my friends here in the UK, Ms. A, has the book, read my Beany Brain newsletter, and kindly loaned me the book.

Wow.

What a book.

I don’t think I’ve read anything like it before.

It’s part childhood memoir, part social commentary, part family trauma, part nature book.

He wrote it from the perspectives of people around the young Chris Packham: the ice-cream truck man, a neighbor, a classmate, his sister—they were looking at Chris from outside. It was his imaginative take on what he thought they thought he was like—or their bemusement about his behavior.

Interspersed with scenes from his recent visits to his therapist.

On Goodreads, I gave it 4/5 stars. Not because it wasn’t an amazing book, but because it was so intense for me that I don’t think I could read it again. I felt the punches and kicks from the kids at his school. I heard his parents yelling at each other. I sensed the depth of his love for his kestrel (a wild bird he kept as a pet) and his deeply-felt life-and-death enthusiasm for the natural world he lived in for hours at at time when he felt he couldn’t go home. His whole-body-whole-mind excitement at finding a badger sett. The drawers where he kept birds’ eggs meticulously labeled. Chris’s obsession with making model airplanes—I could smell the chemicals wafting off the page.

It took me a good chunk of time to finish Fingers in the Sparkle Jar. The detail, the love, the fear, the intensity. I had to mull over it like the kestrel digested its prey.

And the expansive and creative poetic scenes he describes for us in the third person:

He was lying on a tablet of riches, his wilderness explored: he knew the plains, the forests, the canyons intimately and where all its life lived and hid, the boulders that covered the scaly caverns of wood-lice, where quick twisty centipedes were shiny and soft beneath his fingers, the lovely bark where tiny specks of crimson ran and stained those fingers dead red, the corners where secret spiders stood motionless on their soft handkerchiefs and the lake, pool, baby bath, a muddy cradle in which many miracles swam.

Chris said this about his beloved kestrel:

I loved him so much I wanted to be him.

(I noticed that he never gave his kestrel a name. Just kestrel.)

Chris had a dream in August 1975 where he thought he was a bird. As the dream finished, he came back to the ground to be with people again. He describes it this way:

And finally, as the dying light rubbed fire onto the last of the big tops high up in thinner air, he closed his body and fell towards the earth, cleaving the darkening strata, the guttering sun flaring through the last lightning-lit seams of cloud, the air screaming with the glory of his gravity, he sank into the night, into the warm murmur and fizz of their world, from a place where he was one, to the confusion and chaos in the realm of millions, spiralling down, fearlessly racing the perspective of everything expanding superfast, confident in his dimension and then instantly terrified of the crash into theirs, where rather than alone he was lonely.

A tug of war between man’s world and nature, both sometimes violent, with nature leaning more toward predictability where he felt comfort and order.

Though he sometimes experienced situational mutism as a young person, Chris’s inner language is beautiful:

By the time I turned back south the sun smarted a thumb’s-breadth over the woods and the frozen steppes had begun to sparkle as frost became dew, each drop flaring miniature spectra before it dripped and all the wonder became just wet.

What wonder he experienced when he saw otters in the wild for the first time:

He saw the scarf of otter bend back, a twist of of eelmetal spooling a chain of brilliant fizz, and then its head rise, its arch flex in the flux of river, furling down in a thrill of fluid motion, giddy zip and curling coils of tail in a whirl, a twirl of two, both slurping onto the bank with a yip and a nip and ebbing splashlessly into the pool to bow and sweep away, porpoising arcs in the out-stream, warping the plane into the crouch of the big willows, quiet on the reedy shore.

You’ll have to read the book for yourself to find out what gave Chris more autonomy and power and confidence as he grew into an older teenager, and what helped him overcome some very dark moments.

Trigger warnings: bullying, attempted suicide, violence.

And if you want to know about the interesting title…well, I’m not doing spoilers.

Open the lid of the sparkle jar with wonderment and caution, folks.

Ha Ha Haiku

A funny haiku for you every week in every newsletter, whether it’s one of my own or one I curate for you. HA. Ha. Haiku.

Haiku by Yamada Zenjido; translation by jonellepatrick.me

Photo by Abigail Munday; panel of tiles representing the structure of zinc hydroxide; designed by Reginald Till (1950) for the Festival of Britain; I saw it at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London

What Time Is Good for You?

Are you a night owl? Or a lark?

Moi? I’m neither.

Unfortunately.

Or fortunately? Anyway, it means that I have to get creative when I do the things I do and when I create and keep habits that I need to create and keep.

This BBC article talks about each person finding the best time of day for themselves to work out (and how this leads to quantifiably better outcomes). It could mean the difference between forming a workout habit or not exercising at all.

Here’s an example from my own life:

I get good reports from the dentist each time I get my pearly tea-whites cleaned, but they also recommend a little pipe-cleaner-like tool to get between my top back teeth. I pair this with flossing.

But by bedtime I’m too tired to floss or pipe clean.

So I’ve started doing both after breakfast when I brush my teeth:

Floss…
Pipe clean…
Brush.

And I’m sticking with it better.

What time of day works best for you, Beany Brain friend?

Anyhoo, I’m not a lark or a night owl…

Maybe I’m a little grebe. I like soft feathers to hide in (Psalm 91), I love being in or near water, and when storms come, I enjoy bobbing around on my vegetation nest amongst the reeds and not sinking.

Yeehawesome!

Yeehawesome! is a happy-brain roundup in each issue of Beany Brain. What’s happening that’s good in brain land? What’s bringing me joy?

I’ve been using Goodreads to keep track of my reading for many years, and I always wondered if there was a similar space for what I watch. There is: the Letterboxd app. I’m not connecting with other users on there (yet, if ever), but I’m enjoying having a place to tuck my movies away after I watch and then to rate them. It feels kind of like a checkmark on a ta-da list. Dopamine!
Speaking of films, Harriet was a doozy (in a good way—and also, because of the historical subject matter, pretty violent). Based on the life of Harriet Tubman, a former slave and rescuer of slaves on the Underground Railroad, I love that Cynthia Erivo played the role of Harriet AND wrote AND sang the very emotive theme song:

One of my sons heartily recommends the photo series every week in the Guardian called The week in wildlife. A lot of times there are photos of animals from my beloved home state of Florida too.

Quote of the Week

Fragrant couple walks past.

Me: Whew, that’s a lot of perfume.

Son: They put the “fume” in perfume.

Beany Brownie Points and Extra Bonus Funniness

Wonderful Wednesday

Wonderful Wednesday was a day once a year in college when they would suddenly and surprisingly call off all classes and we’d play all day. The cafeteria provided special fun food and we’d do stuff outside like slip ‘n slides and jello wrestling in sumo suits. This segment of Beany Brain is dedicated to that memory of silliness and fun—no words, just a photo from the week that I’ve taken or found that reminds me to let the joy in. Since Beany Brain is published on Wednesday every week (at least, Wednesday in Japan), I hope you enjoy this Wonderful Wednesday.