“I TEACHED HIM TO TALK”:
STORIES OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM
By Marion VanArsdell
Levellers Press
levellerspress.com
Marion VanArsdell, who formerly worked in Northampton schools as an early childhood special educator, recalls that when she was teaching in the early 1980s, children with limited language skills or troubling behavioral issues were often simply considered to have “developmental delays.”
As VanArsdell outlines in her book “I Teached Him to Talk,” it was only students like “Lisa” (not her real name), who spent much of the school day hopping from one foot to the other and humming, that were considered autistic.
Today, she notes, educators and parents are much more aware of the full range of conditions children can face under what’s know as ASD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder — and there are also many more strategies teachers can use to help those children develop, she writes.
In her book, by Levellers Press of Amherst, VanArsdell describes the first two years of the special preschool program she and other Northampton educators set up at Jackson Street Elementary School; she focuses on a number of students who enter her classroom and how she and colleagues find ways to work with them.
“Luis,” for instance, arrives with three words: “no” and “shut up.” He’s an energetic child who has trouble keeping still. But he also appears to be a ready visual learner, VanArsdell writes, and she and her fellow teacher, Lilly, start using visual cues like cards with words and pictures attached to them to get Luis to expand his vocabulary.
By the following May, VanArsdell writes, “I begin to realize Luis is outgrowing us. The boy who arrived with … three words is now using his expanding, though unique, language to negotiate with his friends and to persuade his teachers to let him choose the order for his work tasks.”
The book includes many other examples of day-to-day activities in the classroom, showing how VanArsdell introduced new words and the concepts behind them to children, as she notes that processing language is one of the biggest challenges autistic children can have.
There is success: One of her first students is “Katherine,” who uses “echolalic” speech, simply repeating words and phrases she has memorized from TV and other places. But nearly 20 years later, when VanArsdell retires from teaching, Katherine is at the goodbye ceremony to say hello and tell her about the two jobs she has.
“We used to think she would reach her limit and stop learning,” Katherine’s mother tells VanArsdell. “Instead it seems that she just keeps on making progress.”
LIAR’S CANDLE
By August Thomas
Scribner
augustthomasbooks.com
Terrorists set off a bomb at the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey during a Fourth of July party, leaving more than 250 people dead and another 300 wounded. Among the latter is Penny Kessler, a young embassy intern who becomes an international figure when, bloodied from a head wound, she’s photographed dragging an American flag from the party’s wreckage; the picture quickly goes viral, landing Penny on the front pages of newspapers around the world.
Penny is the central character of “Liar’s Candle,” the debut novel of August Thomas, a University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate who’s spent considerable time in Turkey as a Fulbright Scholar, a traveler and a travel writer. It’s a breakneck thriller that has 21-year-old Penny in the midst of an intricate plot that involves conspiracy and shady figures in both the U.S. and Turkish governments.
The story opens with Penny unconscious in an Ankara hospital room. A slimy U.S. State Department fixer, Frank Lerman, insists on Penny being woken so that he can question her about what she knows of Zach Robson, a young U.S. diplomat who’s vanished following the bombing and is now suspected of being involved in the attack. Frank wonders aloud if Penny is connected to it as well, since she had something of a crush on Zach.
The Turkish prime minister insists on taking Penny to the presidential palace to recover under the care of the president’s personal physician. Instead, she comes under the watch of Melek Palamut, the president’s daughter, who has a mysterious agenda of her own. Penny, sensing danger, escapes the palace by smashing a water pitcher over the head of the president’s chief of staff and wriggling out a window — all while she’s nursing a serious concussion.
Many more twists and turns ensue as Penny, pursued by both the CIA and Turkish police, goes on the run and tries to find out who’s behind the bombing, as well as Zach’s whereabouts; her only friend would seem to be a young CIA officer, Connor, who discovers his supervisor is targeting Penny and him for assassination. Meantime, the cynical Berman says it might be best if Penny just disappears for good: “The only thing better than a pretty girl with a flag is a pretty, dead girl with a flag.”
“Liar’s Candle” is a fast-paced, cinematic read that benefits from Thomas’ close observations and understanding of modern Turkey. But it’s undermined by an improbable plot that seems to have stolen a chapter from “24,” with Penny as something of a female Jack Bauer: knocking out bad guys, parachuting from a helicopter, confronting terrorists and stretching believability past the breaking point.