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Different wiring…

Written on: August 12th, 2009 by: in Reviews

I picked up this book for my daughter after seeing it reviewed in twitter form by @MKlibraries (the Milton Keynes library system near London). For the tween/early YA reader, it’s a nicely crafted mystery set in England, but also notable for its narrator, Ted, who has a brain with “a different operating system”, not specifically defined in the book, but likely something along the autistic spectrum. It’s curious that is the second children’s book I’ve read in the last few months featuring a narrator like this- the other one being Anything But Normal, which was incredibly good and extremely moving.

Taking a quick look in the GoodReads website, I saw a handful of other children’s titles with autistic narrators or main characters, including Marcello in the Real World and Emma Jean Lazarus Fell in Love, the latter of which, like Dowd’s book, doesn’t diagnose its main character, preferring instead to present Emma Jean as quirky, unique young woman with a different way of thinking.