THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM
Autism news and resources: from autistic people, professionals, and parents
Reading A Kind of Spark, I felt a part of myself represented and explained on the page that I’d never seen anywhere else before. I feel so much for Addie, the 12-year-old autistic main character: How she puts herself in the historical stories of witches, and how the injustice of their history upsets her, while others seem detached.
![Book cover with an orange background. An illustration of the lower halves of five folks is at the top: A yellow guide dog, a person with brown skin using a cane, a person with brown skin standing with their hand on their hip, a person with white skin and crossed ankles standing with their hand on their hip, and a person with brown skin using a wheelchair.]](https://thinkingautismguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/WeMoveTogether-9200854.jpeg)
We Move Together should be in every library that children have access to. It should be read to classes—I think it is appropriate for any elementary school age or even middle schoolers.
Maxfield Sparrow unstrangemind.com A mother’s worst nightmare: That’s what Anna thinks she might be facing at the beginning of Donna Levin’s spellbinding novel There’s More Than One Way Home. It’s 2004 and Anna has accompanied her Autistic son, Jack, as a class chaperone on a field trip to Minotaur Island near San Francisco. When four children—Jack among them—turn up missing, Anna fears the worst. Everyone pulls together to comb the island, and the boys are found. One is dead after all, but to Anna’s guilty relief, it is not her Jack. Thus begins a mother’s second worst nightmare, as Jack is accused of murder. The story unfolds from there: Jack’s loving but authoritarian father’s hands are tied with respect to the case, since he is the district attorney and thus has a conflict of interest. Free-spirited Doctor Valentine helps keep Jack out of the crushing institutionalization of the combined penal and psychiatric…
Finding gifts autistic kids and adults appreciate isn’t that hard—if you actually find out what individual people like, and you remember that everyone has their own interests and preferences (and that they’re sometimes the exact opposite of other autistic people’s interests and preferences).
Do you love to give and receive books? We love to give and receive books. So for you and for us, here’s a short selection of recommended books by, for, about, and enjoyed by autistic people and their families. If you have additional suggestions for books that you, your child, or your clients enjoy, please list them in the comments. And consider TPGA Editor Kassiane Sibley’s suggestion that books focusing on a person’s special interest topic are … usually a good choice. Non-Fiction Loud Hands ($24.99) – Julia Bascom “Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking is a collection of essays written by and for Autistic people. Spanning from the dawn of the Neurodiversity movement to the blog posts of today, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking catalogues the experiences and ethos of the Autistic community and preserves both diverse personal experiences and the community’s foundational documents together side by side.” Keep…