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Our current menu serves you up books about autism and Alcatraz

Today’s special:
Our featured title

Al Capone Does My Shirts
by Gennifer Choldenko

In this 2004 Newbery honor book, 12-year-old Moose and his family move to Alcatraz Island in 1935 so his father can work as an electrician and his older autistic sister can go to a special school in San Francisco. When she isn't accepted into the school, Moose must give after school baseball games. At the same time, the warden’s daughter Piper talks him into a money-making scheme involving laundry. Family dilemmas, historical settings and characters merge in this coming of age story sure to delight all readers. Historical Fiction, Recommended Audience: Middle / Young Adult / ASD

next on the menu…starters

Little bites to whet your appetite

Looking after Louis
by Lesley Ely

When a new boy with autism joins their classroom, the children try to understand his world and to include him in theirs. Everybody, Recommended Audience: all levels / ASD

Ian's Walk: A Story About Autism
by Laurie Lears

A young girl realizes how much she cares for her autistic brother Ian when he gets lost at the park. Everybody, Recommended Audience: all levels / ASD

Flight of the Dove
by Alexandre Day

Four-year-old Betsy, an autistic child, begins to improve after she sees a dove, one of the animals at her preschool, fly into the air. Based on a true story. Day is the author of the well loved Good Dog Carl books. Everybody, Recommended Audience: all levels / ASD

followed by…entrées

Novels and non-fiction titles to chew on

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon

Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. Fiction, Recommended Audience: Middle/ Young Adult/ Adult / ASD

The Mouse Rap
by Walter Dean Myers

During an eventful summer in Harlem, fourteen-year-old Mouse and his friends fall in and out of love and search for a hidden treasure from the days of Al Capone. Fiction, Recommended Audience: Middle/ High / ASD

A Wizard Alone
by Diane Duane

While Nita mourns her mother's death, teenage wizard Kit and his dog Ponch set
out to find a young autistic boy who vanished in the middle of his Ordeal, pursued
by the Lone Power. Fantasy, Recommended Audience: Middle / Young Adult /
ASD

and finally…dessert

To satisfy a craving for more

The Speed of Dark
by Elizabeth Moon

Written with love and expertise by the mother of an autistic teenager, "The Speed of Dark: is a riveting exploration into the mind of an autistic man as he struggles with the question of whether he should risk a medical procedure that could make him "normal.” Fiction, Recommended Audience: Young Adult/ Adult / ASD

The Ride Together: A Brother and Sister's Memoir of Autism in the Family
by Judy Karasik

Meet the Karasiks, a typical middle-class 1960s family: one mother, one father, one daughter, and three sons, one of whom, David, has autism. The Ride Together is an extraordinary family memoir told in alternating chapters of comics and text. With a narrative that stretches over nearly fifty years, Paul and Judy Karasik -- he writes with pictures, she with words -- unite to relate the story of their family, their brother David, and the history of their relationship with him. In doing so, each comes to understand the responsibility David represents and the meaning his life gives theirs. Biography, Recommended Audience: Young Adult / Adult / AS

Gangsters, Swindlers, Killers, and Thieves : the Lives and Crimes of Fifty American Villains
by Lawrence Block

Drawing on his experience in creating fictional bad guys, crime novelist Lawrence Block surveys the underside of American history through fifty of its most infamous characters. Some, like Jesse James, Bonnie Parker, and Joe Colombo, led a life of crime; others, like John Wilkes Booth and John White Webster, committed one notorious act. Some, like Pretty Boy Floyd or the elusive thief Railroad Bill, have become folk heroes, whether or not the real details of their lives matched the myths they inspired. Others, like Ed Gein and Ted Bundy, will be forever reviled. Block introduces each biography with a writer's eye for character and a good story. Nonfiction, Recommended Audience: Middle/ High / ASD

Al Capone
by Diane Yancey

The legendary Chicago gangster has long been held up as a powerful and merciless man, capable of doing away with anyone who got in his way. From his days on the Brooklyn wharves to his ascendancy into head boss status, Capone is characterized through his actions and primary-source information. Yancey presents a chronological telling of his life, including his not-so-well-known benevolence, and includes excerpts from some well-known adult books. The black-and-white photographs add dimension to the text, and the picture of Capone, riddled with syphilis as he leaves Alcatraz for Terminal Island, is telling evidence of his fall from power. This is an accessible, concise book on a complex man. Biography, Recommended Audience: Middle/ High / ASD

Andy And His Yellow Frisbee
by Mary Thompson

The new girl at school tries to befriend Andy, an autistic boy who spends every recess by himself, spinning a yellow frisbee under the watchful eye of his older sister. Everybody, Recommended Audience: all levels / ASD

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