With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child, by Keiko Tobe

With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child is an amazing book. It held my attention from start to finish, and I can't wait to lay hands on volume two!

The book is a manga, or Japanese comic book. The story told is one many families with autistic members will know well - the worry, the confusion, the desperation, the lack of understanding from others (including family). It is fiction, but based on information gleaned from interviews with many parents of autistic children.

What I appreciated most about the book is that it doesn't really touch upon the idea of "cure". The mother, Sachiko, merely wants her son, Hikaru, to be happy - and to call her "Mommy". (The scene in which he does finally do this brought tears to my eyes.) Her husband, Masato, begins as a workaholic who blames his wife for Hikaru's troubles - but changes his tune after a personal revelation about his own life.

The struggle to find Hikaru an appropriate school placement is very realistically portrayed. He is eventually put into a special education program at the local elementary school. At the same time, one of Sachiko's friends decides to place her own autistic son in a school for disabled children.

The small family also grows near the end of the book, as Sachiko and Masato welcome a daughter, Kanon, into the family. Kanon is developing typically, based on what we see in the story thus far.

I highly recommend this book as light reading. It took me a few hours to get through it, but I did read it all in one day.

And as I said, I am looking forwards to the second volume.

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