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Anything But Typical

Description

Jason Blake is an autistic 12-year-old living in a neurotypical world. Most days it's just a matter of time before something goes wrong. But Jason finds a glimmer of understanding when he comes across PhoenixBird, who posts stories to the same online site as he does.

Jason can be himself when he writes and he thinks that PhoneixBird-her name is Rebecca-could be his first real friend. But as desperate as Jason is to met her, he's terrified that if they do meet, Rebecca wil only see his autism and not who Jason really is. By acclaimed writer Nora Raleigh Baskin, this is the breathtaking depiction of an autistic boy's struggles-and a story for anyone who has ever worried about fitting in.

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-08-06
Summary: "Anything But Typical Review"

This book really gives readers insight to the struggles that children with autism have to deal with. Written from the point of view of Jason (a 12 year old autistic boy), the book describes daily challenges in detail and makes you feel compassionate towards those that have to suffer with this disease.

I have to say that at times, this book can be a little confusing. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between his thoughts and what is actually happening in the book. He wishes to be normal, he wants friends, a girlfriend, and normal relationships in his life. However, only certain people are able to understand the person that he is. You become aware of what Jason's family lives with and makes you appreciate the patience and kindness that his mother, father, and brother have.

Overall, as a teacher, I think it's a great book for educators to read. I have never really worked with many students that are autistic, but I feel like I'd understand a little bit more about this disorder after reading this book.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-06-15
Summary: "A perceptive and realitstic portrayal inside of the head of an autistic boy --- highly recommended"

Much has been written in the news media over the last decade or so about the rise in incidences of autism spectrum disorders among children. Many of these journalistic accounts, however, focus on the parents, teachers and caregivers of these autistic children, not on the children themselves. After all, part of the profile of autistic children is that they are difficult, if not impossible, to reach according to "neurotypical" standards of communication and emotional attachment. With ANYTHING BUT TYPICAL, Nora Raleigh Baskin perceptively and realistically imagines herself inside the head of Jason Blake, an autistic sixth-grade boy.

Jason's autism was first suspected when he was in preschool, but was not diagnosed until he was in second grade, when a combination of academic difficulties and social challenges finally forced his parents to acknowledge that their son might be different from the other children in his class. Now, as a sixth grader, Jason has had enough therapy and individualized attention to allow him to be fully included in his classroom, but every day is still a challenge for him. He has no real friends, although one or two children are kind to him. His teachers often don't understand why he has trouble waiting in line, adapting to change, or dealing with loud crowds and bright lights.

Jason does feel safe --- and loved --- at home. He has a loving and supportive family who often acknowledge frustration and misunderstanding of his disorder, but love him unconditionally. His parents, not surprisingly, worry about him and his future. His younger brother, Jeremy, both protects and looks up to him. Even at home, though, Jason often has the difficult job of reading his family members' emotions, a process that neurotypical people do without even thinking about it, but that takes tremendous energy and concentration for Jason.

Fortunately, Jason has one place where he feels completely at home and at ease. Although he rarely speaks aloud, he loves words and has a gift for reading and writing, and for understanding how stories work. He loves to write stories and post them at Storyboard, an online short story site where he can receive feedback from other users and comment on their stories as well. That's how he meets Rebecca (screen name PhoenixBird), who loves his stories of misunderstood, misfit characters and his themes of difference and conformity. The two begin an e-mail correspondence, and Jason starts thinking of Rebecca as his girlfriend. But when his parents surprise him with a trip to the Storyboard national conference and when he finds out that Rebecca will also be attending, Jason is terrified. How will Rebecca feel about him when she meets him, when she learns that behind those lovely words on her computer screen is a very different boy from the one she might have imagined?

In ANYTHING BUT TYPICAL, Nora Raleigh Baskin explodes the common perception that autistic individuals are emotionally distant and uninvolved. Jason does feel love, anger, hurt and fear --- he just expresses these emotions in a way completely foreign to more "typical" readers. As Jason writes, it's as if he has to tell his story in a foreign language when he tries to translate his experience into something that will make sense to neurotypical readers. At times, readers may feel like they're looking at Jason's world through a thick, somewhat unfocused glass --- which, come to think of it, might be the way Jason himself views his world, as a complicated, out-of-focus place that requires real work to decipher and interpret.

One of the most moving aspects of this beautifully written novel is the relationship between Jason and his parents. Readers (utilizing the dramatic irony that Jason defines without grasping how it applies to his own narration) will understand that Jason's parents feel anger, sadness and discomfort toward their son. They'll also see that Jason's parents often misread him, just as he misreads them. But they'll also witness the profound love that exists even in this most unusual relationship, a love that expresses itself most genuinely during Jason and his mother's trip to the Storyboard convention.

Obviously, Jason, with his gift for writing and storytelling, makes an ideal subject for a book of this sort, more so than, say, an autistic kid who has a particular affinity for numbers or music. Nevertheless, Baskin has convincingly and movingly humanized the autistic individual in ANYTHING BUT TYPICAL, creating a narrator who readers won't soon forget and inspiring new levels of empathy for the growing number of autistic children in readers' own communities and classrooms.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-09
Summary: "well written"

I wonder if the author is autistic. How else can she understand so well what it's like? Is anyone 100% NT?

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-04-22
Summary: "Autism is certainly a popular subject right now."

In addition to the number of books that purport to be written from an autistic perspective, there are a number of books with main characters who - if you know what you're looking at - are almost *certainly* autistic, but the word is never mentioned.

As a rule, this latter category of books tends to be better. I don't know why. Maybe it's because the focus is on the story rather than the message?

I read this book in one sitting at B&N. I didn't skip any passages, however, because I decided I didn't really care for it I don't have it at hand, so if I make a minor error of fact please just point it out to me and I'll fix it.

This book claims to be in the mind of an autistic boy. I say claims to be because, after reading the author's website and watching her video on the book, I am certain that the author is not, herself, on the spectrum. So what this book really is is a book about a NT trying to pretend to be realistically autistic enough to write a book from the perspective of an autistic boy. A daunting task to be sure, and I start to ask myself - why? Why aren't there more books by autistic authors? It's not that there are no autistic authors at all - off the top of my head I can count seven or eight, and I know there are many more. If anybody is qualified to say what life is like as an autistic individual, surely it's somebody who actually knows?

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "But if she wrote a good book, does it matter?"

And you're right. IF this book accurately catches the experience of being autistic, it doesn't matter that much who wrote it. Except I'm not convinced the author really "gets it". She has a video, as I said, about writing the book ([...]). Three things about this video really jump out at me.

First, there are no subtitles and there's no transcript. Many autistics, such as myself, have some degree of auditory processing issues. While I know we're not actually the intended audience of this book, how hard would it have been to transcribe a two minute video? When I see a video about writing a book from the perspective of an autistic individual, and there aren't even any printed words, I don't feel very hopeful.

The next thing that jumps out at me is that she says that "at the heart of any autism spectrum disorder is the issue of communication". Well, this is a common perspective all right - it's common to parents and doctors and teachers of autistic children. Do you know who doesn't hold this view? Autistics. As a group, autistics tend to say that sensory issues, emotional regulation, and information processing are central ([...]).

I understand why non-autistics tend to think it's a communication thing. They look at a kid, they see the kid can't talk or talks funny or talks about strange things. They see the kid does things that, to them, seem inexplicable or odd. And they assume that it's all "communication". But this is an outside-looking-in view. From your own brain, you'd know better.

And the third thing she said is that "sometime during writing" she realized that having trouble communicating is not the same as lacking feelings. Well, I'm glad she learned something during the writing process, but it sounds like she started off thinking that autistic people just, you know, don't have the same feelings as normal people. (And she's not even ashamed to admit it!)

I know, I know - what about the BOOK! You don't want to read about the author, right?

Well, you take an author who is new to the subject and certainly doesn't have an inside perspective, you're going to have some mishaps.

The main character is a boy whose inner narration includes a lot of thinking about how he thinks (I assure you, even when I've done a lot of reading on autism or psychology I don't sit around in my head - or even aloud! - talking about how I think), misunderstanding basic idioms, and having to puzzle out whether he's been insulted. He has no friends and doesn't anticipate getting any anytime soon, he spends a lot of time online but is unaware of the flourishing autistic community (which may mean he's supervised or it may mean that the author doesn't know about it although it's far from small or secret), he's bullied, he has no tolerance for change at all, and he's completely faceblind. Hey, you know who he reminds me of? That kid, the one in The Curious Incident!

Well, here's my big problem. I'm concerned that people are going to read this book, they're going to read that Dog in the Nighttime book, and they're going to say "Autism, if it doesn't make you like Rain Man or Susan in that BSC book then it makes you like those asocial losers".

Any of these traits can be found among autistics. I personally burst into tears once in the 11th grade when a kid sat in my seat and wouldn't move, while meanwhile the teacher couldn't understand why I was upset. But any one individual is unlikely to have *all* of them in the degree of our intrepid hero. It's building a new stereotype, and one that's not particularly helpful or useful. (And I know, some people are just like this kid. Some people of all groups fit more closely to "the stereotype", and that's fine, but that doesn't mean we should spread it around like most or all people fit it.)

This doesn't mean I think the book is all wrong in every respect. I think it's flawed, and I found the narration less than compelling, but there are some definite good points.

I love how the hypocrisy of claiming that only one party has "trouble communicating" is exposed. The librarian doesn't communicate well with him when she puts form (looking her in the eye) over function (being able to actually understand what is being said). The therapist doesn't communicate well when she "rewards" him with candy he saves to give to his younger brother because, after all, he doesn't like chocolate. (And it's clear that he does love his brother very much, a nice change of pace from some styles of books which think autistics don't form good relationships at all.) His mother certainly doesn't communicate well when she puts his appearance over his comfort, although of course she Means Well.

Although his Traits were exaggerated, they weren't completely unrealistic (and I'm sure some other people on the spectrum would say they were totally true to life. Over in a community I'm in we're still torn on the Curious Dog book - is it COMPLETELY wrong or COMPLETELY right? We just can't decide!), and showing him as being more than fluent online struck me as pretty true to life. And while I know as an adult that his fears that he'll never have friends, or a girlfriend, are not necessarily true (plenty of autistics with those same fears as kids grew up surprised to find that it's possible), it is true that teenagers, typical or not, will obsess over that sort of thing.

While I found his over-analytical narration annoying, if it were toned down it would strike me as more realistic.

And the author didn't do anything I found completely wrong or offensive. If she misunderstood the center, or if she overexaggerated everything, well, that's to be expected. It's hard to write from a perspective that's not actually your own.

So, to sum up, because I know this is super long (and I thank you for your patience in reading it all!):

1. The portrayal of autism is not completely accurate, but it's not so bad I wish it had never been written
2. While I wish we'd see more of these books written by autistic authors, this author did an acceptable job with what she has

I'm giving this three stars. Knowingly writing from the perspective of an autistic individual is a bit of a new subject, so it's going to take some time to see some REALLY good stuff in this field. And you could do worse than this book, I think.

Oh, and at the beginning I mentioned some books which have what appear to be autistic protagonists although the word is never mentioned. Lemonade War is one I liked, and that one Emma something-or-other Fell Out of a Tree is... well, it's okay, anyway. I'm still processing that one.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-04-18
Summary: "Well written and authentic"

This is a young adult novel that was recommended to me by someone who, like me, has a child with autism. Baskin writes as authentically as a NT (neurotypical) can about life when you have autism. Her portrayals of both Jason, his parents and those around Jason (and their interactions with him) were very realistic. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants a little insight into autism or just a well-written young adult novel.