Unmasking Autism by Devon Price

The amount of notes I took.
ADHD and PTSD being sibling conditions to autism. like .,sfjkld
"you're only seen as less adult and less of a person if you disrupt the illusions of self-sufficiency" 
"Sensitivity, despite being a sign of attentiveness and discernment, is frowned upon when you're good at detecting things people would rather not see"
 "it is not cultural appropriation or faking a disability to try out these tools. if autism friendly resources and adaptions prove helpful to you--that's another key signal that you belong in our spaces, or at the very least have a great deal in common with us"
304 Pages

Caterpillar Summer by Gillian McDunn

Caterpillar Summer by Gillian McDunn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There's some things about this story that are just lovely, including diversity and the family struggles. There are a few beautiful sentences, and the overall themes are great. I wanted to love it far more than I did.

There's some definitely plot issues, and a few things that happen in the first 30% of the book that just make no sense. It may be my inner-educator popping out on this one, but I had to suspend disbelief to continue onward, and that was almost impossible for me to do. I think it was clear that the author hadn't done enough research, or didn't have enough experience to write on some of the issues in this story, particularly related to parenting an autistic child. For me, the mom being unaware of so much about her son lacked truth and honesty, and since it's contemporary fiction, I struggled with that. She may be an absent parent, but there's no way she could be so clueless. If nothing else, the school would keep her informed about her child, so this whole idea that she's unaware of his struggles (such as the running) really got under my skin.

The writing is pretty decent. There are a few lines that really stuck with me and made me think. However, there are also quite a few spots where the author just really beats the reader over the head with her message, because she doesn't think we are smart enough to get it on our own. But we are. Granted, I'm an adult, but after teaching middle school for 6 years, I can say that my students were also smart and picked up on things. They didn't need or want books that talked down to them. I wish the messages had just been made through the storytelling, instead of being forced on the reader, as that felt inorganic.

Overall, it's a decent story, though the plot continually lags. It has a lot of emotion, which I appreciate, and the character development is mostly decent. I appreciated the attempt at diversity, though I wish things with Chicken had added up better.

This book will likely appeal most to 5th & 6th grade girls. The voice can be a bit too childish at times, but overall it works. I love the cover. I just wish the overall concept made more sense.

Pages: 304

10% Human: how your bodies microbes hold the key to health and happiness, by Alanna Collen

Here's a startling fact - for every one of the cells that make up your body, there are another nine living on or mostly inside you.  These microbes have a very complex relationship with us, their host organisms.  Without them, we would not be able to digest a good portion of our food, we would lose out on important vitamins and enzymes that they produce, and would also lose much of our immune system.  While I was mostly acquainted with the basics of the role of these microbes in digestion, Collen also summarizes recent research on the links between these microbes, antibiotics, and other illnesses or disorders such as obesity, autism and even personality traits such as anxiety and other moods.  Collen turns the 'you are what you eat' statement around to 'you are what they eat' and describes the widespread effects of various imbalances of microbes on human health.  So, if you want to have better health and boost your immune system, eat what your microbes prefer - lots of good fruits and vegetables.  304 pages.  Medical .

"The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty" by Simon Baron-Cohen

After reading a good review of this book in one of our routed journals, I decided to check it out for myself because I am interested in why some people seem to have a great deal of empathy and others do not.  Baron-Cohen and his colleagues investigated a lack of empathy in relation to cruelty by studying the brain, trying to find those pathways, and how they differ in people with different degrees of empathy.  He also looked at environmental and genetic factors that influence the empathy mechanism.

What he found is that all three influence how empathetic we are.  He also discovered that people who lack empathy are not automatically negative to our society.  People who suffer from Asperberger Syndrome and other forms of autism do not have much empathy but, because of the way their brains process information, they can have special talents.  However, there are immoral people whose lack of empathy leads them to commit cruel and even evil acts.  Baron-Cohen explains three different personality disorders in which this is the case:  borderline, psychopathic, and narcissistic.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in empathy and how the lack of it can lead to destructive behavior.  My favorite parts were about the three personality disorders and how the lack of empathy can be seen in each one.  206 pages including notes.

(The author is an expert on autism and the cousin of comedian Sacha Baron-Cohen.)