Day: April 22, 2016

Now I have more than enough information to start making my book, I am going to look into some designers to help gather some inspiration for my book. As I said previously, I find illustrating very difficult and I know that is definitely not my strong point, therefore I am going to try a different approach and go for a less conventional way and try something new. I plan to use a lot of shape, lines and colour as I want my book to tell a story about autism that the words won’t portray.

One children’s book that I found was this one created by Gloria Dura-Vila and Tamar Levi. It is an extremely informative book and it really goes into a lot of depth about the disorder and explains it very well to children. One thing I found though was that it wasn’t a very light read – I imagine that a parent would have to read it to their child. As well as this, it targets people with autism directly. I want to target children who may have a friend/family member with the disorder so they can learn about it more and know to be more patient with them. I also want my book to be less full-on and not loaded with facts, but instead to explain it in an extremely simple way.

Here are a list of things that I learned about autism over my research that I can include in my book:

• Autism is a spectrum disorder; making no two people with the disorder the same. Everyone has their different behaviours and it can range from being a very mild form of autism to being extremely severe.
• Mild cases of autism are sometimes unrecognisable. People can go about their daily lives with minor disruption from the disorder. Whereas people with a strong from of autism often find simple tasks very difficult and often need a lot of care and attention.
• It is an extremely common disorder. More than 1 in 100 people have autism (or some form) meaning that there are more than 700,000 autism sufferers in the United Kingdom alone.
• A lot of people with autism find socialising a very difficult task. Not knowing how to enterprut body language, normal conversations are sometimes quite hard. They also very literal about things. A simple joke or comment can often be misinterpreted. For example the phrase ‘break a leg’ means good luck, but someone with autism may take this as an insult because they do not understand the meaning behind it.
• Autism sufferers are often known for their love of routines. A simple stage in everyones day to day life will be planned out by someone with autism and if the routine is broken it can often make the person very anxious and uncomfortable.
• Autism is known as a ‘hidden disability’ due to the fact that many people with the disorder look like regular people.
• There is no known cause for autism but research suggests that it is a mixture of genes and environmental factors that could cause changes in development.
• As there isn’t a known cause for autism, there is no cure for it either. In stead there are certain interventions that can help a person suffering from autism such as different learning environments for children and certain coping mechanisms.

Because autism is a spectrum disorder, although people share certain traits, everyone has their own difficulties which means there are so many more facts on autism. I have narrowed it down and the ones above are the ones I found to be very easy to understand and would be perfect additions to my book. I will not be able to include all of this information but I will try to summarise it and make my book as informative as possible.

Looking at this book ‘In a Different Key, The story of Autism’ (Donvan and Zucker, n.d.) I learnt a few things about autism I didn’t previously know. These are all key things I can include in my book. One challenge will be to simplify all of the information I have learnt and put it into simple terms that I child can relate to and understand. I also looked at key autistic websites such as; autism.org.uk and autismspeaks.org. I gathered a lot of information from all of these sources and I am confident I know enough about autism to create a children’s book about it.

The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime is a novel written by Mark Haddon (2003), It is about a teenage boy with autism who struggles with everyday life and it follows him through his journey. It is an extremely informative book and it gives you a very detailed insight into the disorder. I have learnt a lot from reading this book and it has given me a great starting point with my book about what I should include and what I should leave out.