Little Rainman

Simmons, Karen L. Little Rainman Autism - Through the Eyes of a Child. Arlington, TX:Future Horizons, 1996.

Little Rainman is about a boy, Jonathan, who has autism. The book is an insight into his mysterious world, including his emotions, his feelings in social situations, sensitivity of his five senses, and much more.

Simmons filled her story with a lot of information and issues surrounding children with autism. I found it a little unfortunate that the main character was a male Caucasian, because that seems to be a very dominate trend in literature featuring autistic children. What I really enjoyed was the fact that the book was told from the child's point of view, and it really hit hard on a lot of the misunderstood aspects of autism. The only issue I have with the book being meant for younger children is that the amount of reading is a little much, and I feel that younger children wouldn't want to sit through the whole book in one sitting. However, that being said the amount of information presented in the text would be a wonderful asset for any child who's life has been touched by autism or someone that has a general interest in the issue without the complication of unknown vocabulary.

When looking up the author of this book, I was wonderfully surprised. Karen Simmons is not only an author, but she is also the President and founder of Autism Today, which was a wonderful website that I found which offers a lot of information about autism, including articles, resources, and so on for anyone that is interested.