The Best Kind of Different

Schilling, Shonda. The Best Kind of Different: Our Family's Journey with Asperger's Syndrome. New York: Harper Collins, 2010.

I was drawn to this book because of the immense popularity of diagnoses in the autism spectrum recently. Similar to the ADHD craze of a decade ago, it seems many children are now being diagnosed with Asperger's or some flavor of autism. This is not to say that any of these diagnoses is ingenuine; I simply find it interesting that a disease no one knew about before is now so incredibly common.

Sections of this book were very interesting to me. I enjoyed reading about Grant and his behavior before and after the diagnosis. I enjoyed learning how the family chose to accommodate for Grant and how Grant related to his classmates and teammates. Other parts of the story were not as interesting to me, but would definitely be interesting to anyone who likes baseball, particularly if that person is a fan of the Boston Red Sox.

This book was a good read and a quick read. If I once again find myself in a classroom situation, I am certain I will need to use my limited knowledge of Asperger's to better understand the children I teach.