While Rory’s portrayal isn’t flawless, it’s well researched, and a significant step in the right direction of treating autistic characters as regular teenagers and integral parts of the cast.
You Look Different in Real Life is a contemporary YA novel in which the broken friendship between the protagonist and her autistic best friend plays a central role–a thoughtfully handled plot thread that we were eager to talk to author Jennifer Castle about.
While we’re never told exactly what Marcelo’s impairment is, and it’s implied that no one can quite figure it out, it shares many features that will be familiar to those of us on the autism spectrum.
Insecure autistic boy meets thoughtful, magical adventure: The Real Boy is now my go-to recommendation when people ask for books with autistic protagonists.
While some elements of the representation were handled decently, I ultimately wasn’t a fan.
I could criticize the focus on “fixing” and of the correlation between unwantedness and disability, but the book is focused on unwantedness in a broader fashion; Ava is as challenged by her circumstances as she is by her clubfoot.
A thorough overview of common autism tropes that mirror and reinforce real-life stereotypes, with links to news stories, research, book reviews or commentary, and blog posts describing relevant real-world experiences.
Despite their proclamations to the contrary—“don’t tell me you’re one of those people who becomes their disease”—the characters are shown to have nothing in their lives that isn’t about their cancer.
This book portrays its autistic protagonist in ways that will give readers negative, incorrect, and in some cases abusive ideas about autistic people.
Jacobus nailed the struggle with addiction, she nailed physical limitations, she nailed alcoholic and disability-related depression, she nailed the chaos of the active alcoholic, and she nailed the hopelessness and despair that can come from all of it.