Crossposted on Mama's Blog, a blog about parenting a teen on the Autism Spectrum.
Spectrum teens are just like all teens; some of them love to read, some of them like to read, some of them hate to read. One of my favorite sayings about autism is, "One thing about kids with autism; if you've met one kid on the spectrum--you've met one kid on the spectrum."
Ellie doesn't love to read, and my quest to find reading materials that spark her interest is unending. The following is my latest adventure on that front.
I’ve been on the hunt for reading materials for Ellie. We’re trying to move on from picture books, which are too easy for her and too babyish, as well. Teen literature these days tends toward dark and dystopian or romance oriented, neither of which is well suited for our sunny Ellie.
Luckily, there is a wealth of tween literature out there. The obvious choices, popular with tweens the world over, are Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney, more popular with boys, and Dork Diaries, by Rachel Renee Russell, more geared to girls. Both of these series have many sequels to enjoy; nine for Diary of a Wimpy Kid and eight for Dork Diaries. In terms of reading level they are perfect for Ellie, and make use of silly illustrations which she enjoys. On the other hand, they use a lot of slang and figurative language which goes over her head, as well as discussion of interest in the opposite gender, which I don’t get the sense she has a lot of interest just yet.
I hit on the idea of searching through graphic novels. There are a huge variety of topics, reading levels, protagonists and styles, for every age from toddler to adult. After a lot of research, I ordered four graphic novels that I thought might be of interest to Ellie.
The first is Bone, by Jeff Smith, about a skeleton/ghost character on various adventures. It looked cute from the book covers; Bone looks a bit like Caspar the Friendly Ghost. When we got the books and I was able to read through it I thought it was a little intense for Ellie, as they encounter many scary monsters on their treks. I also didn’t like the fact that it used a lot of contractions like “gonna” and “wanna” which can be confusing to literal readers.
I was sure that a series called Babymouse, about a tween mouse and her misadventures at school, would be perfect for Ellie, but I found the subject matter to be closer to Dork Diaries, with a lot of discussion of social status and frequent day dream sequences that I thought Ellie might find confusing. The illustrations are very cute; reminiscent of Felix the Cat, but the overlapping style of mixing illustrations and text was hard to follow at times if you are a linear reader like Ellie.
Next in my stack was a little book about a mountain girl named Hildafolk, written by Luke Pearson. There are four books in this series, illustrated beautifully in muted colors. Hildafolk is on the hunt for trolls. The story is straightforward, the illustrations presented in a linear style, with little slang and not too many characters. All in all, an excellent choice for Ellie.
The big winner in my order this week was a series about a super-hero lunch lady. The first of ten books, Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute, by Jarrett J. Krosoczka, is a rollicking tale of a super spy lunch lady on the hunt for danger in an effort to protect The Breakfast Brunch. There’s a lot of school humor and topics, some of which might be over Ellie’s head, but the simple illustrations, colored exclusively in black, white and yellow, along with well bordered illustrations laid out in a clear grid pattern, were perfect for her. There are a lot of Batman type sound effects–BAM! POW! CRASH!–which I worried would be distracting for Ellie, but she actually loved them, and reads them with gusto.
I know I can’t be the only one searching for this type of reading material for their spectrum reader, so I hope that this reaches someone in need out there in cyberspace.