I don’t take paid content for this blog… there’s a heap of reasons why… but the biggest reason is keeping my editorial voice free of financial bias. I just write about stuff I like and find useful…
I was recently contacted by a publisher asking me to review a book (Wizard of Roz) in exchange for a payment and joining an affiliate scheme to get a cut of any sales I generate.
That’s not for me, however I’m always curious to read new things, so I read the book anyway and ended up writing a mini review in the email back to the publisher.
Given I’d written it already…I figured I might as well post it. It might be useful for other people writing similar books… consider it an accidental book review. Here’s what I wrote in my email to the publisher (after turning down the paid content offer!)
I love the concept of the book and the illustrations. They are beautiful made and depict the scenes really well. Huge credit to the artists, they have done a wonderful job.
The story is also good, I like the bits about penguins and i liked the way it brought out the characters personalities. I can tell Roz loves penguins :)
That said, page 15-16 feel a little out of place. I’m not sure I’d consider Dorethys friends in the movie ‘aides’ and injecting the topic interups the flow of the story. The same points would have been stronger later in the book.
Overall the book is solid, it’s mostly positive in tone and it covers topics sensitively.
However, it does come across as quite dated.
In terms of language and perspective it doesn’t align with the values of the neurodiversity movement much at all.
It’s very much a ‘medical model’ perspective on autism, not wrong as such, just a little out of date compared to the ‘social model of disability’ perspective that underlie neurodiversity.
For that reason I couldn’t recommend it. It treats autism as the cause of the challenges, rather than identifying the environment as the cause and autistic reactions to be natural. The bit at the end talking about one-to-one therapy also has me a little concerned, i wonder if it’s referring to ABA (which is very much rejected by neurodiversity advocates!)
I encounter this a lot, neurodiversity is a very different lens to traditional autism stuff and sometimes folks get the wrong end of the stick.
I wouldn’t consider the book to be neuro-affirming or neurodiversity based. If you’d like to chat about it, lemme know. Happy to explain more sometime….
So erm. Tada. That’s what I wrote to the publisher. It’s beautifully illustrated & crafted book. It’s just a shame it misses the point with a dated perspective on autism.
I hope this is useful to share. If there’s a book you’d like me to review, feel free to ping me an email and I’ll probably take a look :)
