18th February International Asperger's Day

Today is International Asperger's Day, a day when organisations and communities promote an understanding of Asperger Syndrome. Asperger's is a condition on the Austism Spectrum and it is named after Hans Asperger, the physician who defined what it is and helped to have it recognised. The day is held on his birthday. In Australia Professor Tony Attwood is a strong advocate for children with Asperger's and he is always quick to explain that these children see the world differently not wrongly. There is an amazing film clip of Clay Marzo, a surfer on Youtube with Tony Attwood speaking about Asperger's throughout. And a good book to share with children, especially if you want to introduce the rest of a class to Asperger's in an effort to understand a classmate's behaviour then search out All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome by Kathy Hoopman. She has also written some short novels who have children with Asperger's as the main characters and are set in school.

2nd April Hans Christian Andersen (1805 - 1875) International Children's Book Day Amy Schwartz World Autism Day

Today is International Children's Book Day in honour of Hans Christian Andersen's birthday and as usual IBBY has produced a poster. This year's theme is The Book Remembers and it is by Estonian illustrator Juri Mildeberg.

It is also Amy Schwartz's birthday. She is an American author illustrator whose work I know very little about as

I have only seen a couple of her books. The library has What James Likes Best, which won the 2004 Charlotte Zolotow Award. This is a great honour, given that it is awarded to the author of the best picture book text published in the USA in the

preceding year. It seems as if we should have more of her books!

Thirdly, it is World Autism Day, also known as World Autism Awareness Day. The aim of this day is to increase people's awareness about people, especially children with autism. This is becoming easier to do using children's books because of titles such as Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and Cynthia Lord's Rules. Although many of the books for younger children are still overly didactic anything by Kathy Hoopman who writes about Asperger's Syndrome is worth exploring and the picture book Looking After Louis by Lesley Ely and Polly Dunbar is especially good for looking at the consequences of mainstreaming children with autism and thus increasing tolerance of difference. This story is told from the point of view of a girl who sits next to Louis, an autistic boy who is a loner, repeats things he hears, mimicks adults and gets away with behaviour that wouldn't be tolerated from the other children. This book should help initiate good discussion. Another picture book worth searching out is My Brother Sammy by Becky Edwards and David Armitage. In this story Sammy does not go to a mainstream class and he is constantly ruining his brother's things. His brother just wants Sammy to be a 'normal' brother.