Burn by Alma Fullerton

Casey and her mom, Libby, used to travel around the world together; they were like two peas in a pod. Libby McCall is still famous, but it's been six years since she's recorded anything new. Six years ago, Casey's grandmother died and it was time for Casey to start school anyway and Libby met John, who runs a restaurant not  too far from Toronto, and then Casey's little sister Ginny was born. Ginny has autism, so she needs everything to be routine. Between the restaurant business and Ginny's special needs, travelling is out of the question... until Libby takes off on her own. Casey starts sending up smoke signal prayers to her mother, hoping that she will come back, and the fires get bigger and bigger...

As with her previous novels, Alma Fullerton has written Burn in a series of poems, a format which makes Casey's shifting emotional states immediately present. The child hardly gets a break, so be prepared with kleenex.

Readalikes: The Same Stuff as Stars by Katherine Paterson (for another girl taking charge after being dumped by her mother); Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko (for another sibling with autism); Hold Me Tight by Lorie Ann Grover (for another girl's hard luck story in verse).

Mockingbird (mok'ing-burd) by Kathryn Erskine

Life is really hard for Caitlin Smith. She is in Grade 5 and has no friends. She has Asperger's. Her mom died of cancer a while back. Her beloved older brother, Devon, has just been killed in a school shooting. This is Caitlin's story about dealing with grief and finding closure.

It is a decent book, but I was surprised that it won the Young People's Literature National Book Award. I would have picked either One Crazy Summer or Ship Breaker as the winner; these have more layers to explore and invite rereading. Mockingbird, on the other hand, is a straight-forward story. I normally enjoy first-person narration, but Caitlin's voice is really annoying. Realistically so, I guess. For example, when her father was too sad to make supper, Caitlin said, "It's 6:30" over and over until she got a reaction out of him. I don't know that I'd have the patience to deal with an autistic child. She is a likable girl, however, and won my heart in the end.

I like to learn things when I read. I probably got some insights into the spectrum of behaviours that are possible with autism, but the fact that I found most memorable is that Virginia has a state dog, the coon hound. Why doesn't Canada have provincial dogs?

I listened to the unabridged Recorded Books edition (4.5 hours) - Angela Jayne Rogers is the reader. Readlikes for children in Grade 4-6: Rules by Cynthia Lord and The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd, both of which have autistic protagonists.

The Bruise by Magdalena Zurawski

M-'s final year of college comes with some pretty big changes in her life. Change is the hardest thing for M-. She is not your run-of-the-mill quirky character. More like quirky to the nth degree. She either has Asperger's or some mental illness; whatever it is has M- watching herself as if from an outsider's perspective and obsessing about the tiniest of details.

M- keeps all of her toiletries in a bucket on her dresser in her dorm room. "The bucket was white so I was careful to purchase only white cakes of soap white washrags a white toothbrush white tubes of toothpaste and shampoo that came in white bottles. Occasionally though my scalp would begin to itch and its skin would flake and for this reason I was forced to purchase a tar shampoo that had an amber color and came in a clear plastic bottle." M- stores the tar shampoo in a drawer with her socks, since "I held the belief that things needn't be too orderly once in a drawer."

Her beliefs do not include commas, since I don't remember seeing one in the entire book. The sentence structure of the text gives insight into the unusual way M- views the world. In the example of her toiletries, one could infer that M- sees a pleasing whiteness, rather than individual items (separated by commas).

Anyway, M- has affairs with a couple of female students, G- and L-. My favourite part in the book is when M- recounts an earlier conversation with her mother, telling her "I'm not like other boys." I found myself really liking M- and admiring her strong moral compass. The final image, of Bernini's sculpture of Apollo transforming Daphne into a tree, is a good analogy for M-'s metamorphic coming-of-age.

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork

Marcelo Sandoval is 17 and was looking forward to his summer job working with horses at the special school he's attended since his youth. Instead, he is forced to work in the mailroom of his father's Boston law firm that summer. Marcelo's father wants him to get out of the protective environment of the special school - and the treehouse in which he lives when he's home - and into the "real world." Although Marcelo is on the high-functioning spectrum of autism, the "real world" is scary and difficult. Marcelo grows during his summer at the law firm in ways his father never could have imagined. His story broke my heart and then healed it. Grade 8-12.

Embracing the Wide Sky by Daniel Tammet

The author of Born on a Blue Day writes about the way our minds work. He especially wants readers to understand that the brains of autistic savants like himself are essentially the same as every other human being.

I was surprised at how much I learned from this book. For example, the reason that the electoral college system in the U.S.A. gives individual voters more power and how it helps protect minority factions from being ignored by the majority. Opinion polls indicate that 75% of Americans would rather switch to a single national election, and this also is explained; the electoral college system is far more complex and most people prefer to go with the simplest option possible.

Something that has long baffled me is why people buy lottery tickets, even when they know that they are more likely to be killed by lightning than to win a big pot. Tammet explains this in a section entitled "Why People Believe Weird Things." Very enlightening.

How do we measure an intangible thing like intelligence? What role does imagination play in thinking? Why are ideas so much more important than information? Much to ponder in this book. I've also come away with new tips for foreign language learning, which I plan to use when I tackle Slovak.

Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet

Tammet is a young gay man who has Asperger's Syndrome. Born in 1979, he grew up the oldest of 9 children and credits his supportive family as well as his first lover, Neil, for helping him to overcome the obstacles presented by autism and to learn how to live independently.

Autism may affect 3.4 out of 1000 children, according to a recent American study. Few people on the autism spectrum, however, are as high-functioning as Tammet. He is one of only 50 people in the world who can be called an autistic savant. His brain power is phenomenal. He sees numbers as shapes, colours and textures and can perform amazing calculations in his head. He also sees the patterns and relationships between words and can learn a new language in as little as one week's time.

In 2004, Tammet broke a European record by reciting pi from memory to 22,514 decimal places. It was a feat of stamina as well, taking a little over 5 hours. He undertook the challenge in order to raise money and awareness for epilepsy, which he had as a child.

Doctors and scientists consider Tammet to be a gold mine of information about the way our brains work because he is able to articulate what is happening inside his head. I found his memoir fascinating as well as touching. Since reading the book, I've gone to his website. He now lives in Avignon, France, with a man named Jerome. His newest book is called Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind.