I’ve been trying to figure out why it’s so satisfying, even illuminating, to read about people who approach life and relationships from a place outside our normal expectations. In this book, Caitlin’s world is drawn in black and white, very literal, no shades of colors, no confusing faces, and no conflicting emotions. Caitlin can read quite well, even though she’s only ten years old, and she likes definitions, words pinned down in a dictionary with definite, specific meanings.

Caitlin’s brother, Devon, used to explain the messy stuff to her–the colors and the feelings and the rules for right behavior in different situations. But now Devon is gone, killed in a school shooting, and Caitlin has to Work At It all by herself and try to find Closure for not only herself but also her father and her classmates and maybe her entire community. That’s a big job for a girl with Asperger’s who has trouble even Looking At the Person who’s speaking to her.

Caitlin is an engaging character. Her brother’s nickname for Caitlin was “Scout” from the movie/book To Kill a Mockingbird. He likened Caitlin’s direct, no nonsense approach to life to Scout’s disingenuous approach to members of the lynch mob in this scene from To Kill a Mockingbird:

“I’m back in Devon’s room staring up at SCOUT carved into the wood and seeing my special name makes me feel good. Devon said his favorite part in To Kill a Mockingbird is where Scout talks to the crowd of angry men and makes them go away. All she says is hi and that she knows their kids from school. Then all the angry men leave. I don’t Get It. But Devon says that’s exactly what I’m like because I say stuff that’s obvious and people go, Oh, and it makes them think.”

Scout looks into the forest of men who have come to lynch Tom Robbins, and she sees individuals, men from her community with names and families and the ability to feel ashamed of themselves. Caitlin must Work At It, but she, too, has the ability to approach individual children in the mob scene that is her school’s playground and begin to make friends and bring healing to those around her.

I liked this book so much, just as I enjoyed reading Marcelo in the Real World and Anything But Typical and The Speed of Dark and other books featuring autistic and Aspergers children and young adults. Autistic people, at least in literature, have a way of cutting through the bull to the heart of the matter and showing me ideas and relationships between things that I am unable to see by myself. “Simplify, simplify,” said Henry David Thoreau. Through these books and others, I’m learning to simplify a complex world and still enjoy all the colors.

Ooooh, I just learned that Mockingbird won the 2010 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. I am delighted because I think the book deserves lots of praise and attention, although Ms. Betsy at Fuse #8 (and apparently others) holds a contrary opinion. To each his own, but I’ll take Mockingbird and books like it any day.