Henry Normal, poet and script writer has written a memoir with his wife, Angela Pell about living with their son, Johnny, who has autism. It's Johnny and Angela you can see in the photo here.
I work with children and young people on the autistic spectrum and know lots of families, including my own, which are living with this condition. So many of the memoirs written concentrate on people with high-functioning autism but this is the first uplifting one I've read where the condition is severe and the individual affected is not considered 'high-functioning'. For a variety of reasons I'm not keen on the labels 'low' and 'high' but this is the first book I've read which I think accurately reflects family life for the millions of families living across the world with someone on the ASD spectrum.
This is not a miserable book, it has pictures, poems and lots of joy but is also accurate. This is the book that Henry Normal said he would like to have read when they first heard Johnny's diagnosis, do read it if you get the chance, I found it inspiring and based on facts at the same time !
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