Monday, June 21, 2010

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

I loved this book.
the curious incident of the dog in the night time Pictures, Images and Photos

This book is written through the eyes and pen of autistic 15-year old Christopher, our protagonist. It made me laugh, tear up, made me exasperated, made me angry. It was an emotion-palooza. I don't know many autistic children. I know a parent or two with an autistic child, but have never met those children. I've seen the t.v. shows dealing with children with autism and have a read a bit on it. Mr. Haddon does a fantastic job of writing from the mindset of a child with quirks and rules galore; Christopher hates yellow and brown. He won't eat, wear, touch or even likes to look at anything with those colors. He loves prime numbers; the chapters are not numbered 1, 2, 3. They're numbered 2, 3, 7, 11, 13, etc. There are drawings and doodles, showing us Christopher's mindset as he tries to solve the murder of the neighbor's dog and gets a lot more than WE bargained for. He pretty much takes it all in stride.

Mr. Haddon makes you feel all the range of emotions that I am sure parents of these children feel every day, every hour, minute, second. Christopher's parents get angry - when they are at the end of their rope, they scream, throw things, slam things and leave the room. I could only imagine, through Mr. Haddon's writing, how hard, painful and heart wrenching it must be.

I loved Christopher's innocence, and then would whisper "oh brother" when he'd do something that was to me, off the wall. To me. Therein lies the problem. It really is not his problem; it's mine, and all those around him who don't understand him and want to call him a spazz, or a freak, or an idiot.

It's a sad, sweet tale of a boy who sees things through his very own set of strict rules and regulations, set for him by his own slightly different brain.

6 comments:

Debbie St.Amand said...

Just read this one, myself. It's one of Matt's summer reading books, and I read it before I turned it over to him.

DebBee

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Anonymous said...

Ok, you got me. I signed up for Blogger....we will see how much time I have for this. I will definitely have to find time to read that book and I will see if Jacob wants to read it too. Did you buy or borrow it?

Niki said...

I liked it too.

Kaaren said...

I bought it for $1 at the library bookstore. :D

Anonymous said...

ohhhh...I don't know that our libraries have those...I definitely need to check into it b/c my mom has been reading alot.