Genre: Adult/Literary Fiction
Release Date: 2004
Page Count: 226
Rating: 4/5
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Christopher is fifteen years old and lives with his father. He is a math genius and logical without fail. Christopher is also on the autism spectrum. One day Christopher happens upon a crime scene and takes it upon himself to discover who has killed his neighbor's dog, Wellington, and along the way, discovers a lot about himself and his father.
I have been seeing this book around for years and have always meant to pick it up, and I'm glad that I finally got around to it as part of my short-reads February. I really enjoyed Christopher's narrative voice and the lengths the author went to to ensure his voice was authentic. I am a new high school teacher and have had students with autism before, and of course talked about autism in my special education classes, so I really appreciated this novel. Autism can be frustrating for both the person that has it and the people around them, and this novel was honest about that. Christopher and his father were real people with real emotions, frustrations, and love.
I enjoyed the way that the plot unfolded and found it easy to loose myself in this novel for large chunks of time, as I read it in two sittings. I thought this novel was a very accurate portrayal of autism, as far as my knowledge allows me to make that judgement, and it is a novel that I would keep on my classroom shelves without hesitation. If you are looking to diversify your own reading I recommend this novel.
If you are interested in an 'own voices' novel about Autism, I have recently added Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet to my TBR.
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