Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon; eBook 2003 Edition. An Extended Book Review with < My Thoughts  > by Sara Luker

This story is a wonderful work of fiction about a 15 year old savant mathematically gifted Autistic boy who decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor’s dog and eventually uncovers disturbing information about his parents. The author, Mark Haddon has prevailed at finding his way into the mind of this Autistic character.

Excerpts from the book by Mark Haddon –    (2% indicates location in the Kindle version of the book, instead of page numbers).

2%       It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears’ house.

The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason…

But, I could not be certain about this. The dog was called Wellington. It belonged to Mrs. Shears, who was our friend. She lived on the opposite side of the road, two houses to the left. Wellington was a large poodle.

My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057.

< My Thoughts >    Author Mark Haddon tells us that Christopher was NOT a “15 year old savant…” but just very good at Maths. ​

2%       Treffert (2014) tells us that the “Savant syndrome is a rare but spectacular condition in which persons with developmental disabilities, including but not limited to autism, or other central nervous system (CSN) disorders have some spectacular ‘islands of genius’ that stand in jarring juxtaposition to overall limitations.” That “not all savants are autistic, and not all autistic persons are savants.”

3%       I pulled the fork out of the dog and lifted him into my arms and hugged him. He was leaking blood from the fork holes.

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It had four moods. Happy, sad, cross, and concentrating.

I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs. Shears running toward me from the patio.

I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen.

< My Thoughts >       “I do not know what is going to happen.”

Hodgson, et al. (2017) try to understand the child or persons who fear uncertainties due to underlying anxieties which cause ‘repetitive worries’, increasing and arousing worries. They believe that these uncertainties can be reduced by providing opportunities to build the child’s confidence about how to deal cope with unexpected events.

3%       “Let go of the dog,” she shouted. I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass. The grass was wet and cold. It was nice.

This is a murder mystery novel. Mostly I read books about science and Maths. I do not like proper novels.

4%       But I do like murder mystery novels. So I am writing a murder mystery novel. In a murder mystery novel, someone has to work out who the murderer is and then catch them. It is a puzzle. If it is a good puzzle you can sometimes work out the answer before the end of the book.

I started with the dog. I started with the dog because it happened to me and I find it hard to imagine things which did not happen to me.

< My Thoughts >     “I find it hard to imagine things…”

Woodard & Van Reet (2011), in their search for information about imagination and autism, suggest that those with Autism have difficulty in ‘representing the world mentally.’ They have difficulty with object substitution, imagining objects which are not there, or believing an object has specific imaginary properties. They cannot generate spontaneous, complex and varied symbolic play.

In other words, they are saying that without imagination, little ones would not enjoy having tea parties with their teddy bears. Inanimate objects like a toy teapot could not hold or pour tea.

Neither could the inanimate toys join in the fun. They could only partake and sip the tea within the bounds of the child’s active imagination.

4%       I wanted to write about something real and I knew people who had died but I did not know people who had been killed.

The police arrived. I like the police. They have uniforms and numbers and you know what they are meant to be doing. There was a policewoman and a policeman.

The police woman put her arms round Mrs. Shears and led her back toward the house. I lifted my head off the grass.

The policeman squatted down beside me and said, “Would you like to tell me what’s going on here, young man?”

I sat up and said, “The dog is dead.” 
        
“How old are you?” he asked. I replied, “I am 15 years and 3 months and 2 days.”

“And what, precisely, were you doing in the garden?” he asked.

“I was holding the dog,” I replied.

“And why were you holding the dog?” he asked.

“I like dogs,” I said.

“Did you kill the dog?” he asked.

I said, “I did not kill the dog.”

“Is this your fork?” he asked.

I said, “No.”

“You seem very upset about this,” he said.

CLICK on READ MORE to continue....

< My Thoughts > This is HORSE BOY book #2 (Book #1 The Horse Boy Extended Review with < My Thoughts > can be found on my HOME Page Navigation Menu.) Take The Long Ride Home, with Rupert Isaacson. As you read, you’ll be filled with hope and a sense of adventure. I didn’t want to give too much away, but I wanted you to feel as uplifted as I did reading this story.
​
The Long Ride Home: The Extraordinary Journey of Healing That Changed a Child’s Life, by Rupert Isaacson; eBook 2015 Edition; an Extended Review with < My Thoughts > by Sara Luker

2%       Tantrums like tsunamis, like storm fronts moving in from nowhere, erupting even in sleep. No language. My son floating away from me, absent, not there. So tantalizingly affectionate one moment and so lost the next.

1%       The shaman Ghoste once told me, “Rowan will become gradually less autistic until his ninth year. Then, if you follow instructions, his autism will get less and less, and gradually disappear. But the stuff that’s been driving you crazy, the incontinence, the tantrums, these things will end now. From today.”

I tried to take this in, found I couldn’t. So I just kept listening.

“But to make this happen,” he said, “You must make another healing journey to see a good shaman. It doesn’t have to be me, or in Mongolia even, but a good shaman, somewhere; the Bushmen you know in Africa. But one good healing journey a year for the next three years to make the healing complete…” I nodded, not knowing what to think… three more journeys.

2%       I did notice one thing: my son became better outdoors. He tantrummed less, seemed happier, more ‘present’. So we spent hours and hours exploring the little trails in the woods behind our house in the Texas countryside.

< My Thoughts >       “I did notice one thing: my son became better outdoors.”

Lock, et al. (2016) quotes a parent in this study who describes the ease of outdoor atmosphere where everyone has time to enjoy activities in a natural setting with other ASD parents from all backgrounds. Parents liked having the support of trained staff, a sense of community and the nonthreatening experiences which they say they would never attempt on their own.

Orsmond et al. (2004) talks of a study which shows similar results, including the parents saying they wouldn’t attempt taking their child to recreational activities without a well-trained support staff. In addition this group of parents felt that although they provided simple outdoor activities with siblings, such as walking to visit neighbors and extended family, it wasn’t enough.

But this ‘shared outdoor enjoyment’ gave them an opportunity to meet peers and to develop relationships with other families, it was even more important than an ‘integrated’ school setting.

11%     By May, Rowan had started refusing to go to the toilet and his tantrums were coming back, stronger and stronger, like a rising tide. No longer something one could ignore or explain away by tiredness or grumpy moods.

He was slipping. The hard-won – so very hard-won – gains he’d made in Mongolia were steadily evaporating. Yet I had faith. Ghoste had told us we’d have to make three more journeys to complete, to confirm the healing.

And here we were, good pilgrims, making the first of those three journeys. We spent half a day getting the logistics together, putting through calls  - no mean feat. So many strands of my old journalism life coming together.

​The Horse Boy: A Father’s Quest to Heal His Son by Rupert Isaacson, eBook 2009 Edition; an Extended Review with < My Thoughts > by Sara Luker

(1% indicates location in the Kindle version of the book, instead of page numbers.)
 
Excerpts from the book...
 
Part One – 
 
1%       April 2004 my son, Rowan, was diagnosed with autism. The feeling was like being hit across the face with a baseball bat.
 
Grief, shame – this weird, irrational shame, as if I had somehow cursed this child by giving him my faulty genes, condemned him to a lifetime of living as an alien because of me.
 
…Of watching, horrified, as he began to drift away to another place, separated from me as if by thick glass, or the see-through barrier of dream.
 
I had to find a way into his world, into his mind. I found it, amazingly, through a horse, Betsy. But let’s start at the beginning.
 
1%       …Kristin was a suburban girl from California and I was British, born to southern African parents, brought up partly in the center of London, partly on a remote farm, training horses.
 
…I met her…in southern India, in the town of Mysore. I’d been hired to write a guidebook to the region
 
2%       …we embarked on seven years of high adventure: through the more remote corners of India, then to London.  …then to southern Africa for another guidebook contract, and finally – 
…to return to the United States to finish her degree.
 
I went back and forth between the United States and Africa, researching a book on my family’s bizarre connection… to the Bushmen of the Kalahari, and writing about their strange culture of healing through the use of trance and their struggles to regain their hunting grounds.
 
“Seven years to the day,” I whispered aloud. “Welcome to the world, Rowan Besa Isaacson… What adventures have you got in store for us?”
 
Like all new parents, we projected our own dreams and desires onto our kid, and we projected hard.
 
I told myself I wouldn’t push him to become a horseman. But I was lying, of course, already imagining how I’d teach him to ride, share adventures on horseback with him.

​​3500: An Autistic Boy’s Ten-Year Romance with Snow White, by Ron Miles, eBook 2013 Edition; an Extended Review with < My Thoughts > by Sara Luker 

​(1% indicates location in the Kindle version of the book, instead of page numbers.)

<  Excerpts from Ron’s (Ben’s dad) Author Note >
 
1%       First of all, if you picked this book expecting to read a story about how a theme park attraction miraculously cured an autistic boy then you are going to be sadly disappointed. Although Ben’s time spent with Snow White’s Scary Adventures had a dramatic and positive effect on him, at nineteen years old he still remains a profoundly disabled individual. He continues to require full-time supervision and is thus far completely incapable of living independently. Every single penny of any revenue this book generates will go directly into Ben’s Special Needs Trust to provide for his long term care.  Next, although this is Ben’s story, it is by necessity told from my perspective.
 
2%       Much of this book has been constructed based on contemporaneous journal entries or blog posts I wrote at the time these things happened.  A significant part of this book is based purely on my (author Ron Miles) memories of past events.
 
While it was Walt Disney World and Snow White’s Scary Adventures that provided the fulcrum to move Ben’s world, to a very large degree it has been the dedicated educators who have given us the lever to take advantage of that opportunity.
 
< End of excerpts from Ron’s (Ben’s dad) Author Note >
 
< My Thoughts > 
 
This was an ode to Disney and a magical place and a magical boy named Ben. Much of this book has been constructed based on contemporaneous journal entries. Many parents keep a journal of their journey with autism.
 
<  Excerpts from Ron’s book  >
 
2%       Benjamin was a genuine Christmas gift delivered by C-section the day after Christmas.
 
4%       The next six months passed exactly as you would imagine, with diapers and bottles and many sleep-deprived nights. Ben was a normal happy infant and we were a normal happy-but-exhausted family.  Then one day I was unceremoniously fired from my job. The first crack in the dam of our marriage.
 
Three months later I was still under-employed and we were subsisting on part-time jobs. At nine months began to be concerned about Ben’s development. He was lagging behind on some of the standard metrics. He was not displaying the kind of cognitive and sensory skills that are expected by that age.
 
Ben’s pediatrician assured us that while Ben was certainly on the low end of the bell curve…it wasn’t that unusual and every child is unique and progresses at their own rate.
 
5%       At Ben’s twelve month check-up he showed no significant improvement over his nine-month exam. By now the pediatrician was genuinely concerned and referred us to specialists for additional testing.

​
​All I Can Handle: I Am No Mother Teresa: A Life Raising Three Daughters with Autism 
by Kim Stagliano & Jenny McCarthy, eBook 2010 Edition; an Extended Review with < My Thoughts > by Sara Luker

(3% indicates location in the Kindle version of the book, instead of page numbers.)
 
< Excerpts from Kim’s Introduction >

3%       My sector of the autism community has taken a real hit in the media recently. We’re the crazy folks who are anti-vaccine (so not true), believe in junk science (buzzzzzzzz – wrong answer, thanks for playing), and spend our waking hours molding fashionable hats out of Reynolds Wrap. I look horrible in silver – no tinfoil hats for me.
 
Just a lot of questions on why autism rates continue to soar, catapulting entire families into emotional, marital, and financial chaos. All three of my daughters – Mia, Gianna, and Isabella – have autism spectrum disorder. Autism is diagnosed four times more often in boys than girls. Given the boy-to-girl ratio, you can see how our family is pretty unique.
 
After reading about our lives, you’re sure to feel better about yourself. That’s promising, isn’t it?
 
< End of excerpts from Kim’s Introduction >
 
< Excerpts from Kim’s Book >

​7%       Having a child with autism is like a giant game of chess. You need to think several moves ahead to ward off potential problems.
 
9%       Before I really knew what was going on with my first two daughters, Mia and Gianna, I had an incident that, in hindsight, was where I veered off the Suburban Mommy Street and onto the Autism Autobahn.

​








​Autism Triplet Twist: Survival Stories of Parents, Triplets and Autism by James E. Potvin, eBook 2013 Edition; an Extended Review with < My Thoughts > by Sara Luker
 
Excerpts from the book – (6% indicates location in the Kindle version of the book, instead of page numbers).

Excerpts from the book, with < My Thoughts > by Sara Luker 

6%       I have lived this story and been able to make sense out of chaos. I am the father of triplets. Our triplets are all fraternal girls. Our story is unique and different. I have been told by friends, family and total strangers that I should write a book. This is that book!

9%       Twist 1: OMG!  We’re having triplets! Congratulations, you are having triplets! Say What? Are you sure? It was now confirmed. My wife and I were expecting triplets. The ultrasound showed three separate, healthy heartbeats.

I remembered there was a warning on the pills my wife took at the doctor’s recommendation, a very small warning, in extremely fine print. There was a tiny chance you could have multiples… like winning the lottery. How had we beaten the odds? Our doctor said that in the twenty years he’d been practicing, these were the first triplets off those pills.

12%     Melissa was taking MBA classes at a nearby university. She eventually got too big with the triplets to reach the gas or brake pedals. When she finished her last class we decided her education was complete. She had enough classes to graduate. Two days later, our lives went into overdrive.

On the way to the doctor’s office, my wife wanted to shop for shoes. The weird cravings to get a Whopper Junior at 11pm were now a craving for shoes. We stopped at the mall and an hour later she had new shoes for her doctor’s appointment.

An hour went by and she was still in the doctor’s office. I began to pace around the waiting room. After ninety minutes, the receptionist told me that my wife had been admitted to the hospital.

13%     The triplets were going to be too high risk for our local hospital. The hospital we needed was an hour and a half drive from our house, but they had the staff to handle the triplets’ situation.

The babies had made it thirty two weeks. I darted down the glass corridor over the street and into the hospital. I stopped at the hospital desk and asked for directions. I took the elevator, up a few floors and down a long hallway. There she was, my wife, lying in a hospital bed. She told me to sit down; we weren’t going home anytime soon.

Morning finally dawned and the doctor entered the room. He said he would get everything ready and start the process in about forty five minutes.  Melissa was told she could not eat, so I ate her breakfast for her and told her how good it tasted.

14%     Two doctors worked on Melissa while three nurses were there to catch the babies. I snipped three umbilical cords. After a quick picture session, the babies were whisked away to incubators.

​​Paula’s Journal: Surviving Autism by Stephanie R. Marks, eBooks 2012 Edition; an Extended Review with < My Thoughts > by Sara Luker

(1% indicates location in the Kindle version of the book, instead of page numbers.)
 
< Excerpts from the Forward/Acknowledgments, by Stephanie R. Marks >

1%       My name is Stephanie Marks and I have autism. I am 38 years old, dark curly hair, bright green eyes. I have tiny, slender feet and I am very short. I am non-verbal. I look like other people you meet. I love to laugh and I often pray.
 
Autism controls my life and I can never change that. The monster called autism might jump into my thought pattern at any time and disrupt the flow of my thoughts. 
 
When I was a child I could not find a way to stay in control.  I will let you see a few of my days through my eyes.  They are not in an order you can predict.
 
That is to let you see how it is in my mind, skipping from one thought to another. 
 
For my friends and family, remember this is a work of fiction.  Each day is fiction, but the thoughts and feelings are genuinely mine.  The reason I am willing to open my mind to you is to help you see how similar we are.
 
< End of excerpts from the Forward/Acknowledgments >
 
< Excerpts from the book, Paula’s Journal, a fictional biography, by Stephanie R. Marks > with < My Thoughts, by Sara Luker >
 
1%       None of us can climb into another person’s mind. Never are we allowed to go inside and wander around. That would be too revealing, too scary.
 
2%       My name is Paula.  I am autistic. You may not know what that means to me.  It is my hope that if I share with you some of my secrets, you will get to know me and autism better. 
 
I love trains.  I love the click clack.  I love the repetition.  I love the predictability. Click clack, click clack.  I know what to expect.  Click clack, click clack.  Coming down the tracks.

< My Thoughts >       “I love trains…”
 
Susan Moffitt, http://www.autismkey.com/trains-and-autism, shares that “Many children with autism have a well-documented interest in trains, enthralled by their motion and predictable patterns.”

​Spinning In Circles & Learning from Myself: A Collection of Stories by Tsara Shelton, eBook 2015 Edition; with < My Thoughts > by Sara Luker
 
Excerpts from the book – (10% indicates location in the Kindle version of the book, instead of page numbers).
 
10%     When we teach our children and ourselves this is right and this is wrong we start seeing it and feeling it where before we hadn’t.  Stimming, rocking, flapping, jumping, flicking, poking, clucking – and more – are common with our autistic loved ones, and there is nothing wrong with them.  Until we say that there is.
 
Then we begin an unfortunate feedback loop where we see it as wrong, they see it as wrong, and what used to feel good (or else why would they do it?) becomes something they dislike about themselves.  Social rules exist for a reason… they are helpful.
 
Feel free to show your family why flicking a stranger’s hair won’t help them make friends and might make the stranger nervous.
 
11%     One morning not too long ago, my youngest son got up at six am, made himself some breakfast, got dressed, brushed his teeth, deodorized and combed his hair.  Then he stepped outside to play with the dogs.  That was when I knew he was struggling with going to school.
 
Declyn is not for sure autistic, but he struggles intensely with social transitions.  He brings home report cards with all A’s; he is popular with his peers as well as with his teachers.  Everyone just loves him!
 
But very often the stress of being that guy surrounds him like a fog, and he just can’t see his way out.
 
Each new doorway of social interaction exhausting him emotionally.  Playlands and parties are also anxiety builders and, success wise, hit or miss.
 
< My Thoughts >     We don’t want to change them, but neither do we want to exhaust them emotionally.
 
Smith & Sharp (2013) when interviewing a young woman with Asperger’s found that she thought… “It would have saved a lot of the wondering ‘what’s wrong with me’ and I could have learnt to cope with things better sooner.”                                                                                     
 
11%     This day, when Declyn came in after playing with the dogs he looked at me and said, “I just can’t go to school today.  I have low self-esteem, and my elbow hurts.”  Yea, so he stayed home.
 
< My Thoughts >     “…I have low self-esteem, and my elbow hurts.”  
 
How endearing is that statement! Myers, et al. (2011), tell us that when a child feels clumsy or not feeling popular that day, they tend to socially isolate themselves.  This in turn leaves the child facing bullying and further social exclusion by their peers. We don’t want to ‘fix’ them, but we do want to reduce the likelihood for later depression, anxiety and other uncomfortable states.
 
12%     Parenting, autism, happiness – these have become things about which people tend to come to me for advice, and I gladly give it.  Some days I feel confident that my ideas are quite useful.
 
< My Thoughts >     “Parenting, autism, happiness…”
 
An article by Jane Johnson, managing editor of Autism Research Institute (2013), she quotes another author Fingerman (2011) who says, “Parents are only as happy as their unhappiest child.”