It took me awhile to read this. Mainly, the idea of lugging this tome home from the library, to read about raising a kid with autisim. I don’t like reading anything that relates to little kids. And it’s suppose to be good?
Yep. And it is.
With the Light is the fictional tale of new mother Sachiko Azuma, who thought her life was pratically perfect. She married a businessman, and now they have a kid. Unforunately, her world turns upside down as it becomes apparent that’s something dreadfully wrong with her kid, with his constant tantrums and lack of communication. First he’s though deaf, and then autistic. The story then follows the mother entering a state of denial as she copes with an impossible child and a husband always at work.
The story just keeps on rolling, one life event after enough. They all feel familiar in a way, but unique enough to stay entralling.
And their is the one unique element in the story all together, Hikaru, the autistic child. Austism is an incredibly hard disease to explain, especially in words. But the choice in explaining through the pictures makes for a better understanding then anything in any book would do for me, as I’m not interested in long complicated descriptions that accompany a mysterious disease like autisim. It also enters the world of raising an autistic child beautifully, illustrating the issuses with such a child, and the tactics used. Little blurbs accompany the story, with information not only on more details with raising a child, but things that might matter to anyone, like what you do if you’re working with an autistic person.
The art is typical shojo style. But with this story, anything else would have been too much.
The main weaknesses of the book are few, and matter little in the long run. There is far too much recapping, but enough story to make it tolerable. The only other element, is sometimes it’s rather unrealistic, but those are few and far inbetween.
Overall, I’d say, not just a good read, but a must read added to the graphic novel universe.
-Janette E
Autism is a neurological disorder–not a disease.
This book offers a very vague, basic outline of what autism is like, but in order to get the big picture you DO have to make the effort to read up on it a bit (which, unfortunately, most people won’t bother to do, and would help show how much this comic glosses over autism-related issues).
I’m glad this is helping getting people’s feet wet, but I can’t help but hope people will take the initiative to learn a bit more.
@Ashley-I’m sorry, I was taught it was a disease.
I don’t see how With The Light falls short, and to be honest, and I’m unable to understand what you’re saying. ^_^; Imo, it’s tells the important stuff .
This wasn’t directly related to my situation, but it was way better than The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.