The Guardian – Angela Neustatter
“Marcus Powell was a cheerful, happy-go-lucky child with a circle of good friends in the reception class at Trinity primary school in Hereford. His classmates seemed not to notice the side of Marcus’s face, described by his mother, Sam, as “looking as though a trench goes right down it”. Marcus was born with a cleft lip and palate so has a gap in his lip and the roof of his mouth. The 15 operations he has needed have not helped the way he looks, but that had not concerned him. Everything changed, though, when Marcus moved up a year and the children became more conscious of his disfigurement. “It was as though suddenly they saw me differently,” says Marcus, who is now 11.”(more)