Reddit reviews Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism

If you want to understand your nonverbal autistic child, there are some great books out there to help you do that. I personally have read and recommend:

• The Reason I Jump: A short and easy but moving read. This is a book by a nonverbal Japanese autistic boy who learned to communicate through pointing to letters/writing. While we can't say for sure his experience is the same as other children like him he explains is feelings, sensations, and the reasons for many of his behaviors that are common to autistic children.
  
  
• Carly's Voice: Longer book but moving and well written. Most of the book is by Carly's father. He tells the story since infancy of his family including his daughter Carly who is severely autistic and nonverbal. Many considered her severely mentally disabled. However, when years later she finally learns and is willing to communicate through letters/writing (it is physically a lot of work for her) he learns she is much brighter and more aware then he imagined. Includes passages, conversations, interviews by Carly in the book that give information on what she is experiencing.
  
  
• Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism Written by genius animal behaviorists and well known person with Autism/speaker on Autism Temple Grandin. Tells her life, her experience, and how she thinks and experiences things differently. Between the other two books in length she is less severe on the spectrum then the Carly or Naoki but she still thinks, feels, and interacts with the world in a way that it was amazing to have insight into/I would never have guessed.
  
  Order these three books right now. They're all well written and so so insightful. You won't regret it.

I would like to add to this list How Can I Talk If My Lips Don't Move?: Inside My Autistic Mind and Carly's Voice, two stories of young people with ASD that have learned to communicate well through hundreds of hours of intensive intervention. The first book was written by the young man himself when he was a teenager and includes beautiful quips of poetry.

This video at 2:50 summarizes it well:

"Tito, without your mother pushing you, how would your life have been different?"

"I would have been a vegetable."

http://youtu.be/Nfiap3a7Tuo?t=2m50s

Pretty old video. If you want her book: https://www.amazon.ca/Carlys-Voice-Breaking-Through-Autism/dp/1439194157/ref=mp_s_a_1_1

It's been sitting in my cart for like 2 years ...