Autism and Classical Myth: Outstanding 'autism' book for young people match no. 4

Why classical myth and autism?

Why classical myth and autism?

The idea for this project started to take shape at a meeting in 2008 with a special needs teacher, who mentioned that, in her experience and those of her colleagues, autistic children often enjoy classical myth. I began to wonder why this might be the case, and whether – as a classicist who researches, and loves, classical myth – there was anything I could contribute. I started this blog to report on my progress which was often sporadic until the launch of the Warsaw-based European Research Council-funded project Our Mythical Childhood (2016-22) to trace the role of classics in children’s culture.

My key contribution to the project is an exploration of classics in autistic children’s culture, above all by producing myth-themed activities for autistic children. This blog shares my progress, often along Herculean paths, including to a book of lessons for autistic children focusing on the Choice of Hercules between two very different paths in life. The image above, illustrating the homepage of this blog, is one of the drawings by Steve K. Simons, the book's illustrator, of a chimneypiece panel in a neoclassical villa at Roehampton in South West London. The lessons centre on this panel.

Tuesday, 21 December 2021

Outstanding 'autism' book for young people match no. 4 - Planet Earth is Blue

With this posting, I am continuing live-blogging about the IBBY catalogue of recent books ‘for’ disabled young people. I’ve put the ‘for’ in inverted comma because I am quoting from the title of the Catalogue, but also to signal that I’m not sure whether the books are in fact ‘for’ disabled young people, not the ones whose evaluations I’ve read so far...

I am quite far down, so would expect not many more matches. I got as far last time as noting the next match, to one with a title which looks to be quoting from David Bowie’s Space Oddity, to a book, again from 2019, and this time from the US:

Panteleakos, Nicole (text) Planet Earth Is Blue, New York, USA: Wendy Lamb Books, 2019 [233pp.] ISBN 978-0-525-64657-0

My initial thoughts give the title are firstly that the book might concern autism as – commonly (I’ve written about this recently myself) - expressed as a specific ‘world’ - either a single ‘planet autism’ or as a world distinct to, and inhabited by, any single autistic person. The ‘blue’ meanwhile suggests the colour often used for autism (I’m not sure why autism is blue... it’s time I looked into this…).

The space reference turns out, I’m gathering from the evaluation, to concern an autistic girl called Nora who is waiting for the Challenger launch in the mid 1980s, with the Challenger countdown paralleled with the ten days while Nora waits for the arrival of her older sister who is a vital presence in her life. The impending Challenger disaster, too, looks to be paralleled with Nora’s own life via the letters that Nora, who is non-verbal, writes to her sister.

Nora’s autism, we are told, is “accurately portrayed” - against which criteria it isn’t stated - with “traits of OCD, stimming, sensory issues and overactive imagination woven seamlessly into her character “ (p. 38).

According to the evaluator, “Parents and teachers seeking books for middle school students to build empathy will find this gripping read an excellent choice.” The sense I have been getting as I have read the entries on earlier books in the catalogue is coming though if anything more strongly with this currently entry – namely a sense of an evaluator or evaluators who are non-autistic and assuming non-autistic readers. There is something missing, namely an autistic perspective or a sense that the books could be for autistic readers in addition to non-autistic readers who seek to understanding autistic lives and experiences.

There is, therefore, a mismatch between the title of the Catalogue - 2021 IBBY Selection of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities – and the books concerning autism whose evaluations I have looked at so far.

There is another match! To a book that, like Planet Earth is Blue looks like it might also concern a non-verbal person. The title is Talking Is Not My Thing! I’ll get to it as soon as I can mark out ‘space’…