Posted: November 12 2009 at 11:08am | IP Logged

I LOVE cats and I absolutely LOVE this book!

As for explaining in that way, it depends on the 13-year-old.  If it were me, I would have wanted my parents to just talk to me rather than use a book to explain.  If your child is "young for his age," maybe it's more appropriate, I don't know. 

Posted: November 12 2009 at 12:35pm | IP Logged

Thanks for the replies.

My main interest in using this book is because my son can be somewhat of a hypochondriac. He's seen the different autism comercials and such and from the get go, he was convinced that autism will kill you. Now, I've done my best to explain that that just isn't the case, but he doesn't seem convinced. My thoughts are that this might give an intro and then we can talk about it after with no mention of autism, just asperger's. He seems to run a couple of years younger as far as emotions and behaviour go. I haven't had the chance to actually read the whole book, just what I can preview on Amazon, but it seems simple and straightforward, which would be good for him. 

Posted: November 13 2009 at 10:48am | IP Logged

I've only briefly looked at the All Cat's Have Asperger's book, but it seems cute. My favorite for telling kids about their diagnosis is "Different Like Me: My Book of Autism Heroes" by Jennifer Elder. It's really positive and won't make kids feel bad about themselves for the ways they are different.

I have read the Blue Bottle Mystery mentioned in another post. I liked the book and the story for the most part, but I thought that the charcter with Asperger's was portrayed very negatively. I didn't like how they portrayed him as being a burden to his dad and very angry almost all of the time.

Nicole