Rules by Cynthia Lord

This review was originally published on my other blog in 2007.

This book has long been on my Amazon suggested list, but I just never seemed to put it into my cart. Well, it finally came to my local library - I was the first one to check it out. I read this one quickly - one day and enjoyed it. The story is about a 12 year old girl who has an autistic younger brother. She patiently, and sometimes not so patiently, tries to teach him how the world functions, because he can't learn it on his own.

During the course of their visits to occupational therapy for David, Catherine gradually begins to get to know a boy in a wheel chair who also comes for therapy at the same time. Jason can't talk, but uses a book to point to words that he wants to use to say something. Catherine, who loves to draw, gradually gets very interested in thinking of and illustrating various words that he might need.

The most interesting thing about the book for me was to see Catherines shifts in perspective with regard to Jason. At first, he is just one of the motley assortment of people in the waiting room, then a curiosity to draw, then an awkward person to be curious about, and gradually he becomes an actual friend, accepted with all of his pieces, including the wheelchair, which, at one point, she tried to draw him without.

It is a good-hearted story. The people in it are flawed, but most of them are trying to do what they can. I even liked the part where Catherine drags her dad away from his work for something that is really important to her, saying that she needs him, too - maybe not as much as David does, but she still needs him sometimes.

I don't know how children with a disabled person in their family would react to the story. My guess is though that they would feel it resonating strongly with their experience. While I was reading, I was recalling one day when I was subbing in a Life Skills classroom. There were only 5 or 6 students in the class, but these children were severely disabled. Each student had a full time aide and they did virtually all of the instruction that day, as there was no way I would be able to come up to speed on their disabilities in one day. I was there mainly because they needed a certified person in the room. There was one autistic girl in the class who especially focused my attention. She also had a word book that she used to point to things she wanted to say. But it was a slow and painful process and she obviously hated it. Left to her own devices, though, she would probably have done nothing all day. It was an interesting, but difficult day - not difficult in the sense that I had to figure out what to do, but difficult in terms of trying to figure out what I thought about the class and the students.

Well worth reading.