A Friend Like John

Book excerpt: A Friend Like John; Understanding Autism is intended for elementary-aged peers of children with autism, and is based on the life and traits of the author's son, John, age 8. Unlike other children's books, which do an excellent job of presenting autism, this book illustrates the fact that children with autism have many similarities to typically-developing children. On each page, questions are posed to the reader such as, "have you ever felt like that?" The goal is to foster acceptance of children with autism by their typically-developing friends, family and classmates. Whereas the differences children with autism have are often obvious to others, sometimes we forget that we all do have many things in common.