“Everybody has a heart that can be touched by something.”

My book club’s May/June book is The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida (David Mitchell of Cloud Atlas fame spearheaded its English translation). I don’t personally know anyone on the autism spectrum, but I have acquaintances affected by this and I am always eager to learn more about the way we are and what it means to be a child with special needs  and how they see the world differently than I.

Naoki Higashida is a young man in Japan who was lucky enough to have parents and teachers that were willing to work their asses off to make it possible for him to communicate with the outside world, however he could. Together, they came up with using an alphabet grid so that Naoki could create sentences, words, thoughts, and stories, all so he could interact with the world around him. At the ripe old age of 13, he sat down and wrote this book as a way to hopefully educate us “normal” people as to why folks diagnosed with autism behave the way they do. I am soooo glad that David Mitchell found this book and encouraged its translation to English. I think everyone should read Naoki’s Q&A and his stories – they really do help you empathize and understand someone who is incapable of making themselves heard and understood. While I certainly don’t feel like an expert on autism, this book definitely helped me understand some things about why autistic children and adults interact with others in the way that they do, or why they focus on particular things over others, etc.

This book is also incredibly short. I read it in a single day during my trip from North Carolina to Punta Cana. You have no excuse not to pick it up.