Category Archives: book

Ido in Autismland New Translation in Hebrew

I am thrilled to share that my memoir, Ido in Autismland, is now available in Hebrew!

It is also available in Japanese, Russian and of course, English with pending translations in Polish and Spanish!

Please also take a read of my novel, In Two Worlds.

 

Ido in Autismland is now also an audiobook

Happy to announce that Ido in Autismland is at last available as an audiobook.

In the Author’s Voice interview and More!

I wanted to share this radio interview interview my mom and I did on WSIU-FM, NPR with Jeff Williams for his show In the Author’s Voice.
In it, I discus autism, my books and more!
WSIU-FM Jeff Williams Interview

I also wanted to share with you this article I wrote for Between the Lines Book Blog.

For Russian Speakers

Excited to announce that Ido in Autismland is now available in Russian!

Silent Advocates

I am happy to let you know about two new books that rely on the writings of autistic typers to understand autism. Professor Edlyn Pena of Cal Lutheran University has edited two compilations of essays, one more scholarly and in-depth, the other using more contributors, but briefer. I have contributed my two cents to both books.
Last weekend people came to Cal Lutheran University for a conference celebrating the books’ publications and met with eight of the ten contributors to Communication Alternatives. It was a happy day seeing the changes in attitude and recognition since I started on my typing journey.
I hope this film from the conference will move you. Our messages are honest and truthful. They are also messages from autistic people themselves.

I hate to be a pain, but I felt I must juxtapose the last film with this one. This is what we are up against. Who do you trust to understand autism better?

No more talking about us without us.

Interview and Book Reading on Autism Live Podcast

I am belatedly sharing an interview done with my mom and Vana Thiero on the Autism Live podcast last month regarding “In Two Worlds.” Since I was unable to be there in person, I participated virtually by pre-recording answers into my iPad. The second video has a live reading of Chapter 1, Beach Day, read by performer, Eli Bildner.
Many thanks to all involved, and especially to Vana and Eli.

“In Two Worlds,” is a Quarter Finalist

I am proud to share that In Two Worlds is a quarter-finalist in Publisher’s Weekly BookLife 2018 Award!

New Book Update!

I’m thrilled to share that my new book, a novel called In Two Worlds, will be released in early July. I will share the formal announcement very soon. It will be available in paperback form on Amazon, in kindle and also online on Smashwords.

I hope that you will let people know about it and if you like it, I would greatly appreciate if you could write a review online, on Amazon or on Goodreads.

In gratitude,

Ido

My New Book Update

For the past several years I have been writing a book. It has been interesting and hard work for me. I can’t write swiftly like a ten finger typist would since I can only point to letters or type with one index finger. Because of this, I have to always keep my plot outline and my scenes planned mentally  because I am able to write just a few paragraphs at one sitting.

But, my book is at last finished. It is now in the final proofreading stages and it is in the process of having the cover art designed. It should see the light of day in a few months and I will give you more information as it goes.

I will share with you that my new book is a work of fiction. It tells the story of a boy with autism named Anthony. I hope when you read his story that you will come to care about him and his family and his two worlds.

Book Review: Plankton Dreams

I belatedly heard about Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay’s newest book, Plankton Dreams: What I Learned in Special-Ed, which he wrote in 2015, so my review here is two years late. In my opinion, that’s no sin. We authors get lots of reviews in the beginning, but few later on. Since this book deserves your attention, it’s good to write about it later on too.

For those who have not heard of Tito, he is Soma’s son, the first recipient of RPM, or however she referred to teaching her son how to communicate at the time. While everyone else with autism got 1+1 and play-doh, he got physics and Socrates and a true classical education. This is home-schooling Soma style. When scientists heard about Tito and his erudition and independent skills typing in a very autistic looking exterior, they wanted to study him, test him, and so on. I first heard of him just before I learned to type. My experts said he was “one in a million,” and my ABA supervisor said he wasn’t really autistic because his typing proved he had been misdiagnosed. In other words, he has been knocking down their doors for a long time and each book pushes a bit harder.

This memoir “novella,” (it is a short book), is sad, funny and biting satire. When Soma and Tito moved to Austin, Texas from India so she could teach communication to autistic kids, Tito had to go someplace during the day while she worked. The system being what it is, this brilliant, educated young man who moved autistically, got sent to a special day low expectation autism class. He used this time to analyze, like an anthropologist or social scientist, the absurdity of his situation. He studies “scientifically,” how people react to him sniffing their heads, rummaging in their purses and spinning their chairs. All for the sake of science! He savages the system.

“I created my own learning goals…” he writes. “I analyzed the responses of people to these situations—what I call my social experiments. I became an empiricist. Why shouldn’t the autist study the neurotypical?”

Here he conducts a head sniffing experiment on his teacher, among others.“Mr. Gardener…did not want me to sniff his head. He would rather dodge my approaching nose or stand on his toes so that my nose could not do what it longed to do. Mr. Gardener was bending over his desk, providing a rather complete view of his head.” And like a scientist, he collected data. “He jumped higher than the bus attendant—I could tell. It was a perfect jump, his star like head antigravitating away from Planet Earth.”

He describes the people in his world in special-ed: the students, the teacher, the aide, the teaching assistant, the administrators, the bus driver, the do-gooders (“Mr. Goodness Gracious”), and also his own boredom in this environment. Tito conveys his surreal existence, bored and analyzing his boredom through his sensory lens of highly educated philosophy. Sometimes the book is laugh out loud funny. Sometimes it is tragic-comedy. This book is unique because Tito is fully into Autismland perspective as he writes.