M.R. Carey’s The Boy on the Bridge (2017) is a prequel to The Girl with All the Gifts, both parts of a zombie apocalypse series I read because a frienM.R. Carey’s The Boy on the Bridge (2017) is a prequel to The Girl with All the Gifts, both parts of a zombie apocalypse series I read because a friend is doing a project based on dystopian monster books. I do read a lot of dystopian books (Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is my latest, which I loved), but I am not typically into zombies. I am one of the rare comics readers that stopped reading The Walking Dead, so see? I mean, I get the whole allegory for our time, and the need to get together to save the world, so that makes the whole genre worthwhile. I’m pro-survival!
This one is good, well-written but unless it was because I read it fast, I didn't think it added much new to the genre. The pacing seems slow for half the book, and I don't care about many of the characters. I’ll look at your reviews to see how I was wrong. I mean, it is YA horror and features a boy sent out into the world to save it from virus-created monsters, or “hungries.” The passengers of the Rosalind Franklin, an armored motorhome holds scientists, military personnel, and a fifteen-year-old boy named Stephen Greaves.
Stephen is our mc, and interesting--autistic, savant. The pregnant Dr. Samrina Khan is our primary female narrator and gets Stephen. All the others seem quite indistinguishable from each other and seem to scapegoat (or just be mean) to Stephen apparently because he is young, smart and weird.
Stephen discovers a band of wild children who are as fast and predatory as the hungries, but they have the ability to communicate and think. This is a key important discovery, that these children seem to be different than adults infected by the virus.
I do like that discovery and what it means for the future. I like the opening of the book, I like Carey’s top scale writing chops, and I like the epilogue, that has a hopeful vibe. ...more
A collection of nine stories the author illustrated relayed to her by adults with developmental disabilities such as adhd and asd. The sad thing aboutA collection of nine stories the author illustrated relayed to her by adults with developmental disabilities such as adhd and asd. The sad thing about the stories is that so few family members or teachers were supportive of these individuals as they grew up. Some 0f this may have to do with perfectionist, mono-cultural Japan where everyone must try has hard as they can to be successfuly at everything they do. Little tolerance for differences.
Most of the authors confess they often blamed themselves for failing to meet standards set by teacher sand parents, but the bullying by peers and teachers and parents was just maddening, devastating. One father with obvious disabilities fails to support his own daughter who exhibits similar traits. Such societal struggle to be to be tolerated, to be understood. So much depression and anxiety in so many as a result and not surprising.
But another thread is the resilience of those who shared their stories. Meds helped many. Some found a single counselor or teacher or family member who supported them and tried to work with them instead of constantly against them. I am reading this with a young person close to me, recently diagnosed, sometimes bullied, much supported and loved in his family but misunderstood and under-appreciated by others over the years. But we are working especially hard to create safety nets for him as he approaches adulthood....more
Sensory: Life on the Spectrum edited by Rebecca (Bex) Ollerton is "a Comics Anthology featuring comics from autistic creators about their experiences Sensory: Life on the Spectrum edited by Rebecca (Bex) Ollerton is "a Comics Anthology featuring comics from autistic creators about their experiences of living in a world that doesn't always understand or accept them."
I just read a related book, My Brain is Different: Stories of ADHD and Other Developmental Disorders, a manga collection of nine stories by people with autism/adhd and related disorders, all drawn by the editor/illustrator, and though I prefer the consistency of that art work, Sensory, while being (to me) jarring in its variability, has the advantage of its being illustrated by its various contributors. unique in that it is about autism by people with autism, offering their insights to each other, families, the general public.
I now have three children on the spectrum and the fam thinks I probably am a high-functioning member of the tribe, as well, with probable adult adhd, too. Probably true.
An interview with Ollerton, borrowed from Courtney!
The Birds is a short novel by Norwegian poet and novelist Tarjei Vesaas, translated with great respect for the author’s lyrical prose and the quiet chThe Birds is a short novel by Norwegian poet and novelist Tarjei Vesaas, translated with great respect for the author’s lyrical prose and the quiet characters. I think it is a masterpiece, without question. It was certainly in the top four or five books I read in 2022, but it was published in Norwegian in 1957, so is not exactly flying off the shelves today (in the USA, at least; I am sure he is still very popular in Scandanavia).
Mathis is known by everyone that lives nearby as Simple Simon. He’s never labeled, but then in 1957 when this book was published, no one would have used this word to describe him: Neurodivergent. I have two boys on the autistic spectrum, and I think these contemporary terms fit Mathis in many ways. He can’t quite function in society without help; he can’t really work regularly, it’s too much for him, and he can’t quite understand the patter of “clever” people. He just wants to be outside with birds and fish on the lake. He lives with his sister, Hege, who works at home and takes care of him. She sends him out to try to get some work, but this is rarely successful.
“What can you do when everyone around you is strong and clever?”
Mattis is intensely connected (as my sons are) with nature and animals. He has an almost psychic or spiritual connection with trees, storms, the lake, and yes, birds. When a woodcock flies over his head he takes that as a good sign for them. When a hunter kills the bird, he takes that as a bad sign for them. I thought of indigenous spiritual connections to land as inhabiting spirit. Two aspens stand nearby his house (older, with a leaky ceiling) he associates with him and his older sister, who takes care of him, knitting sweaters constantly to make enough money to feed them. When one of the aspens is hit by lightning, he takes that as a bad sign for them. Nature speaks to him, or to anyone, if we listen.
Increasingly, Mattis and Hege are living a precarious existence, financially. At one point she suggests (though she mainly needs to just get him out of the house, because he is driving her crazy with his questions and his crazy ideas) he take his (also leaky) boat to ferry people across the lake. He has to bale water out of it all the time, and his head is elsewhere, so at one point he barely makes it to a far shore. Two girls help him, and so suddenly this is a good day! I thought of Steinbeck’s Lennie, also a simple, sweet guy in Of Mice and Men, who also likes girls, especially when they are nice to him, of course.
Increasingly, there is an accumulation of ominous moments that seem to portend. . . something bad: The dead bird, the lightning strike, the leaky house, the leaky boat, and then the turning point, when Mattis picks up his one “ferryboat” passenger, lumberjack Jorgen, who (okay, I won’t spoil the ending, I promise, but he's part of the turn) comes to live with Mattis and Hege, and falls in love with her. What can this possibly mean for Mattis’s future? What if Hege were to leave? People in town are generally nice and respectful to him, but it is only Hege who truly takes care of him, and to some extent understands him, as lonely as she herself has been. We are sympathetic with her need for love. We can see her dilemma.
Here’s a passage that can give you a little flavor of how Mattis’s mind works, and how respectfully Vesaas crafts him as a character:
“This gave him another opportunity to use one of those words that hung before him, shining and alluring. Far away in the distance there were more of them, dangerously sharp. Words that were not for him, but which he used all the same on the sly, and which had an exciting flavour and gave him a tingling feeling in the head. They were a little dangerous, all of them.”
Over time we begin to see the world as Mattis does, seeing the fearfulness of communication, and the signs and portents he sees. We begin to understand him, as “simple” (which is to say different) but also very complex. We worry about him in his engagements with the community. We come to see the world through his eyes, to some extent. I loved this book so much! It's one of my all time favorite books already, and in my first encounter with Vesaas’s work! I highly recommend this sweet, achingly sad, lyrical work. So much compassion here for Mattis, and Hege, too. Such lovely writing. I will read more of his work, for sure.
PS And then I read another book by Vesaas I felt was just as powerful, The Ice Palace! Two of my very favorite books of the year! Both short, both intense, mysterious, lyrical, luminous....more
A revision of a story Vaero Cazot did fifteen years earlier about Olive, a neurodiverse girl with a rich inner life at a boarding school school who a A revision of a story Vaero Cazot did fifteen years earlier about Olive, a neurodiverse girl with a rich inner life at a boarding school school who against her will gets a chatty, lively roommate who really wants to connect with her. The blue moon--with a duck for Olive as sidekick--is part of the place Olive goes when she needs to. Others are her school bully her, but she begins to get support from her roommate. The first of what Cazot promises are four volumes, with pleasant, inviting artwork helping us imagine what it might be like for Olive to be living inside her head.
I also read and liked another Cazot work, Betty's Boob, about surviving breast cancer. ...more
Talk about reading as autobiography! I’ll fill you in, here, in a bit. But I read Language Arts because I am a lifelong English teacher and because I Talk about reading as autobiography! I’ll fill you in, here, in a bit. But I read Language Arts because I am a lifelong English teacher and because I have a son with severe autism, and this book deals with both, maybe even the relationship between the two. I have read a couple books about English teachers lately, The English Teacher by Lily King and Stoner by John Williams and both, like this book is, among other things, about the relationship between literature and life. Or more precisely: How is the teaching of English potentially relevant to the problems we face in the world? Or what does “English” have to do with the English teacher in this book, Charles, and his son?
I have been taking my time to write this review because I have to say it was largely a miserable experience for me to read it, taking me back a couple decades to my own experience of teaching English while learning that my son was diagnosed with late-onset autism (he was, such as the boy in this story, by all accounts recognizably “hetero-normative” until he was about three or so, with language and cognitive development consistent with expected benchmarks for his age, and then began to rather dramatically lose all verbal language and other markers for “normal” development; he’ll never live on his own, functioning in many ways at the three-year-old level). Cody and my son Sammy bear many similarities.
In addition to those personal connections that made it hard to relive my experiences, there are really no characters to like or admire in the book, really, though there is a turn to the possibility of redemption toward the very end. It is, as the book forced me to recall it, a trip to hell, which doesn't mean it's a bad book--it's not--but just not pleasant. It may create some empathy for those going through the process.
This book is about a teacher, Charles Marlow, a kind of stoner (not John Stoner) bartender who marries a younger woman, Allison, has a child named Cody whose brain they, in a panic, in rage and despair, try desperately to “save” as I and my then wife did with Sam. You name it, they (and we) tried it, as things unraveled for both of our families in the nineties: Special diets, drugs, B-12 shots, behavioral and speech therapy, lead chelation, lead abatement, and on and on. Nothing worked for Cody, or Sam, and they and we, in turning our emotions against each other instead of the child, exploded our marriages to bits in the process.
In the novel we tack back and forth between Charles as father and Charles as fourth grader when he was a gifted student of The Palmer Methods of cursive penmanship (This guy Charles would seem to be about my age, as I went through this process, too). This penmanship sequence maybe goes on a bit too long, but it’s an interesting commentary on teaching for surface features versus deeper human connections. The English teacher, Ms. Braxton, is a kind of dark satirical portrait of an English teacher who makes not connections with literature or her students.
But there’s a key event in the fourth grade: Charles befriends a “disabled” child named Dana, who is assaulted; Charles doesn’t sufficiently defend Dana from these bullies, which figures in his eventual response to his own son in complicated ways, of course.
Charles also wins a city-wide creative writing contest, so he has a knack for fiction, which also figures in the story of Cody's sibling, Emily.
So this book is about so many things: Language and fiction, the teaching of English and its relation (or not) to life, faith, self-blame, and our perception of kids with disabilities (or who are not heteronormative): Do we love them as is and/or do we try to help them conform more to societal expectations? Cody and Sammy share some characteristics: Both are in their early twenties and are living in group homes; both have serious challenges, but they also very much need to be loved and understood.
The book is titled Language Arts, which refers to an “experimental” class in creative writing in which the young Charles is enrolled, where the making of stories follows a template. The almost comical focus on penmanship and story templates that Charles excels in would seem to be a reflection on the ways the teaching of English shaped Charles’ parenting. So that's interesting to me.
A few things happen in the end: 1) A surprise with respect to one character, that i found interesting and thematically useful; 2) Charles encounters a gifted high school student who does a photography project on Cody, celebrating him in a way Charles had never really done; 3) A nun with dementia is in the same art program with Cody (which extends the exploration from autism to dementia, obviously), and 4) Charles, years later, runs into Dana's mother, sparking memories of the events of fourth grade.
The implication is that the realization of all these things might help Charles change his life. I really didn’t “enjoy” the way the book forced me to re-examine my own past--those fights with the ex-wife seemed like nightmare autobiography--but there are still so many connections between me and (the WAY more unpleasant!!) Charles, I couldn't help compare myself to him. I didn’t love the book but I admire it, though maybe think it takes on too many themes (spirituality! daughter Emily! Thalidomide babies! Penmanship!) is a bit over-complicated, finally. I'll say maybe 3-5 for me, and round up for the ambition, capturing the nightmare....more
Probably in part because I have two sons on the autistic spectrum (though neither of them resemble the main focus of this story in the least) and becaProbably in part because I have two sons on the autistic spectrum (though neither of them resemble the main focus of this story in the least) and because I am the associate editor of a journal on autism, I loved this book, that tells the story of Marguerite, a woman who is glad to be finally diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, so she can make sense of who she is and accept herself. She finds a community to connect to and makes changes in her job and various relationships, as a result. In the time I have read this I have recommended it to several people with autism or who are working in the field, or my friends and family members. And now to you!
The artwork makes her story lighter and inviting. There's plenty of information for those trying to make sense of their own or their friends' differences....more
I have two sons with autism, one severely autistic, the other only recently diagnosed, who might at some point become possibly fully functional, not sI have two sons with autism, one severely autistic, the other only recently diagnosed, who might at some point become possibly fully functional, not sure yet, so I have both 1) read a lot about and have a lot of personal experience autism, as parent and teacher, and 2) I know far more boys than girls are diagnosed with the disorder, so I was interested in this short graphic non-fiction book by clinical psychologist Sophie Bargiela and illustrated by Sophie Standing.
Though I like the attractive coloring I am not a fan of the digital “infographics style,” but I appreciate the work for making a single point in a succinct (40 page) and more visually-arresting fashion than most non-fiction books: That we misdiagnose girls who are on the spectrum because they sometimes seem to better “camouflage” their symptoms than boys. An appendix lists some texts for further reading, because this short book is clearly just a kind of introduction to the topic. I think that the book is accessible for middle grades and YA so could be useful for teachers and students in helping identify both boys and girls who might possibly get more help with a correct diagnosis.
Of course we all know of Temple Grandin, who has written many books about autism without making the gender distinction. And because we have so many more people with autism than ever—and no, it’s not just better diagnostic techniques, anyone who taught thirty years ago and still teaches today can tell you that there are many, many more students with autism and other neurological disorders of various kinds today—it is useful to know all we can about it. There are many works of recent fiction that include girl (and boy) characters on the spectrum; one recent one (that also does not identify gender differences) that I really like is Liana Finck’s Almost Human: A Graphic Memoir, which is much longer, more artistically interesting and accomplished, and ultimately more insightful.
Still, I like it that Bargiela’s work is both based on interviews with girls with autism, and makes an attempt to reach out to a general audience, based on her interviewing 3 young and articulate—so thus high-functioning—women: Paula (24), Ellie (19), and Mimi (30) who were mainly seen by families and professionals as anxious, depressed, or simply shy, and who coped by “camouflaging,” “pretending to be normal,” better “passing” for neurotypical than many boys, according to the author. Of course three interviews—not even in-depth case studies—do not a persuasive case make, and I would like to know more about this assertion of gender differences, I’m intrigued, and I’m disappointed that we don’t really get to know these women at all in this short book, but the quotes Bargiela shares are sometimes heart-breaking: “It’s very draining trying to figure out everything all the time.” I still appreciate what this book could do to reach teachers and parents and young people. I can imagine someone reading this and exclaiming: “Oh, this makes so much sense, I probably have [or she has) autism!” ...more
long before I would have children, never imagining that two of them would have autism. Neither of them are anything like Professor Grandin, a "savant," a student of animal science. and known world-wide as an expert on autism, her own experience of it. I have since come to read many works of hers on the subject.
This picture book focuses on Grandin's already famous invention of a "hugging" machine for the humane treatment of animals, which connects to in some ways better than to humans. I especially liked the illustration work here of Giselle Potter, whose early work I also really liked, This is my Dollhouse:
“The day was green. They said, ‘You have a blue guitar. You do not play things as you are.’”—Wallace Stevens
Liana Finck’s Passing for Human is my ide“The day was green. They said, ‘You have a blue guitar. You do not play things as you are.’”—Wallace Stevens
Liana Finck’s Passing for Human is my idea of a great and truly inventive graphics memoir, using comics to explore the essence of her life story, and using every literary tool at her disposal to accomplish that goal. Franck says she has never been quite comfortable in the world, which makes us think: Outsider, alien, ennui, other. Finck says her “less than human” experience is in part “neurological,” which is also to say that she identifies with some aspects of the autistic spectrum. She is more comfortable with animals than humans. She is uneasy in her own skin. Lonely, she is also most comfortable being alone. Introvert? To the max.
Passing for Human is Finck’s attempt to explain who she is, and in many ways what I have described above seems unremarkable, familiar territory. What makes this tale special? Finck endeavors to tell her story in the context of her personal (and sometimes amusing, disarming) renditions of creation/origin myths. It feels like a fairy tale or fable of a life, which points to her own view of the world, of creativity, of identity, of family, of stories. She tells of her meeting—after being alone for many years—another artist who is like her, who she connects to. She writes of her mother, and especially her father, who shares some characteristics with her. She writes of her grandmother, whose story inspires and shapes her as other stories do.
So she tells of her family as memoirs usually do, but she almost never does this in a linear way. Her approach is kind of meta-narrative in that she shares “failed” beginnings to the memoir, “false starts” that she includes, anyway, and then begins again. How does an introvert tell her story? Well, not confidently and straightforwardly, which seems just right. It feels original and lyrical and simple and sweet and vulnerable for her to have shared her story in this way, and I love it.
Her relationship to the world, always so unreal, changes, becomes more substantial, and real, when she makes connections to others who understand her:
“It’s only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea, but it wouldn’t be make-believe, if you believed in me.”—Harold Arlen, “It’s Only a Paper Moon.”
So this memoir is poetry comics in places, where words or narrative seem to fail her, and where images need to embody her struggle, and where other stories like the creation myths help out. One image or analogy she uses is the idea of a shadow throughout; the shadow is her best and often only friend. It advises her, and abandons her for sometimes useful purposes, throughout.
I liked this subtle, quiet, intensely rendered memoir a lot. I also read Finck’s A Bintel Brief, which also revealed her interest in stories, but other people’s stories, taken from the (Jewish) Forward’s letters pages by the same name. But this, Passing for Human, is Finck’s own articulate and sometimes anguished and occasionally funny story, and is more emotional than it is a record of the details of her life, which is to say it resembles a poem made up of stories.
Is it a bit surreal? Is it speculative fiction? I say yes to both; I say it is true to Liana Finck. Philip Pullman was once asked if his work is fantasy and he said that the category of fantasy was something others put on his work. He sees it as realistic fiction to me, because this is how he sees the world. I have a tendency to think that the representations Finck shares in this book is pretty much how she sees the world. And it may only be a fictional depiction—a paper moon—version of the truth, but it’s good enough for me.
Mighty Jack is a new graphic novel series for children, including tweens, by the author of the popular Zita the Spacegirl series. I think you can expeMighty Jack is a new graphic novel series for children, including tweens, by the author of the popular Zita the Spacegirl series. I think you can expect this one will be popular, too. Based on the familiar Jack and the Beanstalk story, focused on Jack’s finding his strength by facing monsters, this version has Jack with a single mother working two jobs, both days and evenings, and Jack having to take care of his autistic sister Maddy. Jack takes Maddy to a fair, loses her for a time, and makes an (improbable) exchange (replacing the cow from the original story!) of his mother’s car keys for a box of seeds. As Mom tells him (and anyone can see), she needs him to grow up a little bit and be better at helping out.
The fun begins, as you might suspect, when some of the seeds get planted, and it is clear from the start that this garden (oh, yes, not a beanstalk, here) is not paradise. Home-schooled neighbor Lily gets involved in the fray, teaching Jack swordplay (role reversal, yay) but it’s not entirely if she is a great friend or not in this enterprise. But she tells him, not all dangerous things are evil. So we’ll see about that. There’s more danger than safety in this first volume, just to say.
Some Zita characters show up, so that’s fun. Swords are wielded, genres are bended, we have Maddy, who typically never speaks, who speaks to Jack about the seeds, and she seems to have some special knowledge about this seed/garden world. Still, she makes a mistake in planting a seed near the end of this volume that creates. . . a cliffhanger.
Overall, the art is great, the story okay, from my perspective, but all the 10-12 year olds in my house thought it was great, which kicks my 3.5 rating up to a 4. ...more
A beautiful graphic novel by Belgian Gijsemans about a man, Hubert, possibly autistic, living alone, who loves art and spends time going to art museumA beautiful graphic novel by Belgian Gijsemans about a man, Hubert, possibly autistic, living alone, who loves art and spends time going to art museums in Belgium and Paris. He takes photographs of some of his favorites, some of which feature women, and he paints some of these images for himself. He is more interested in women as art than as human beings. I think it was the poet Robert Creeley really who said (though I can't quite locate it) that he would rather be with a naked woman than read a poem about a naked woman, but Hubert can't relate well to people. When a neighbor attempts to seduce him, he doesn't quite get it, which makes the story sad. Much of the story is wordless, as Hubert rarely speaks, and is alone. But this becomes a melancholy reflection on the often solitary connection between art and life. I thought it was lovely. ...more
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