Raise Your Autism Awareness This Year
These stories – by people with autism, and by authors who write from the perspective of characters with autism – provide a window into the unique experience of living with autism:
Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports From My Life with Autism
by Temple Grandin
Nonfiction: Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is a gifted animal scientist who has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the United States. She also lectures widely on autism—because Temple Grandin is autistic. Writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, she tells us how the country of autism is experienced by its inhabitants, and how she managed to breach its boundaries to function in the outside world.
I Am Intelligent: From Heartbreak to Healing – A Mother and Daughter’s Journey Through Autism
by Peyton and Dianne Goddard
Nonfiction: A look into the lives of a mother obsessed with curing her child of autism and a daughter who retains full awareness of her situation and who finds her voice through Facilitated Communication.
by Siobhan Dowd
Fiction: When Ted and Kat’s cousin Salim disappears from the London Eye ferris wheel, the two siblings must work together–Ted with his brain that is “wired differently” and impatient Kat–to try to solve the mystery of what happened to Salim.
Episodes: My Life as I See It
by Blaze Ginsberg
Nonfiction: Autistic teen Blaze Ginsberg creates titles and categories for the different periods and moments in his life, resulting in a list of episodes that exist in various stages of production as his life progresses and the days of his existence roll on.
Livvie Owen Lived Here
by Sarah Dooley
Fiction: Fourteen-year-old Livvie Owen has autism, and her family have been forced to move frequently because of her outbursts. When they face eviction again, Livvie is convinced she has a way to get back to a house where they were all happy.
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night
by Mark Haddon
Fiction: Despite his overhwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor’s dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.
Colin Fischer
by Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz
Fiction: A boy with autism teams up with the high school bully to get to the bottom of a cafeteria crime.
Autism: The Musical
DVD [2008}
Nonfiction: This documentary profiles five children with autism, their parents, and acting coach Elaine Hill as they take on the enterprise of a full-length stage production.
Anything But Typical
by Nora Raleigh Baskin
Fiction: Jason, a twelve-year-old autistic boy who wants to become a writer, relates what his life is like as he tries to make sense of his world.
Scholars with Autism: Achieving Dreams
edited by Lars Perner
Nonfiction: There’s a common myth that having autism implies severe disability, failure or worse: institutionalization. This anthology challenges those notions with autobiographical stories about living on the autism spectrum and refusing to let a diagnosis identify them.
Marcelo in the Real World
by Francisco X. Stork
Fiction: Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, faces new challenges, including romance and injustice, when he goes to work for his father in the mailroom of a corporate law firm.
Find out more about autism and Autism Awareness Month from the Autism Society, or research autism using one of our online premium sites.