Different like me my book of autism heroes.pdf

Different Like Me

My Book of Autism Heroes

Jennifer Elder

Illustrated by Marc Thomas and Jennifer Elder

Jessica Kingsley Publishers

London and Philadelphia

First published in 2006

by Jessica Kingsley Publishers

116 Pentonville Road

London N1 9JB, UK

and

400 Market Street, Suite 400

Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA

www.jkp.com

photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or

incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner

except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the

terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London,

England W1T 4LP. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of

this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim

for damages and criminal prosecution.

The right of Jennifer Elder to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her

in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Elder, Jennifer, 1968-

Different like me : my book of autism heroes / Jennifer Elder ; illustrations by Marc

Thomas and Jennifer Elder.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-84310-815-3 (hardback : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-84310-815-1 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Autism—Juvenile literature. 2.

Celebrities—Juvenile literature. I. Thomas, Marc. II. Title.

RC553.A88E43 2005

618.92’85882—dc22

2005014169

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 978 1 84310 815 3

ISBN-10: 1 84310 815 1

ISBN pdf eBook: 1 84642 466 6

Printed and bound in the People’s Republic of China

For Morgan and Bramwell

About Me

Hello! My name is Quinn. I’m eight and three-quarters years old. My favorite things are

baseball, dolphins, and ancient Egypt. Oh yeah, and I’m autistic. Sometimes I don’t

understand people, and sometimes they don’t understand me. Little things get on my

nerves, like too many people talking at once. It can be hard to fit in. But when the other

kids see how good I am at drawing, they are interested. This is how I make my place in

the world. I just concentrate on what I do best.

Did you know that nobody had ever even heard of autism until the 1940s? It was

around before then, but there just wasn’t a name for it yet. Then two different doctors,

Dr. Kanner and Dr. Asperger, each started thinking about what some of their patients

had in common. Some didn’t speak. Some were very good with numbers and patterns.

Some were bothered by loud noises. But they all seemed to live in a world of their own,

hardly noticing people around them. Both of these doctors, thousands of miles apart,

looked at their patients and came up with the same word: Autism (from the Greek

word for “self ”).

Still, it took a long time for us to begin to understand autism. It wasn’t until forty

years later that Dr. Asperger’s work became widely known. Since the beginning of the

twenty-first century, we have learned much more about autism and Asperger’s

Syndrome in the Arts and Sciences—some who blend in with the crowd, and some

who proudly let it show.

Sometimes I wonder about all the autistic people who lived before, though. Most

probably never met anyone else like them. They must have thought that they were the

only ones who ever cared more about trains, or music, or the planets, than about

making friends. They probably assumed that every person on earth but them knew the

secret to fitting in.Did they wonder why they weren’t like everybody else? And how did

they turn their unique abilities into something great? It’s hard to say for sure, but there

are even some famous people who I think may have been different like me…

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