I'm looking forward to my daughter learning to read better as I will be saving this for her and I think she will really enjoy this and can relate so much.

They would also only drop off a case of books and leave us to run it – it was so lovely to have you on hand to chat to the children and recommend them books, as well as the small (but appreciated! I personally really struggled to relate to her demand avoidance and how that plays out in her relationships because I present almost the completely opposite way on my “spikey profile” to the extent of naive people-pleasing. She was trying so hard to explain her thoughts and her behaviors and the way that her autism affected her, and yet I continued to have thoughts of "oh my word, I don't know what I would do if I was the parent in this situation. As a parent who’s going through some of these experiences (purely as a spectator, which I know is not the same) I found some camaraderie with in the pages, which is what I was hoping for my daughter when I bought it. Some of the more embarrassing extracts from her childhood and teenage diaries are used as the diary entries in her debut novel, Dandelion Clocks.

We need more characters like Tally in the media because maybe some of the less stereotypical demographics in our community might be able to get better access to help and diagnosis at an age where the support is crucial for learning how to navigate the world. With diary entries written by eleven-year-old Libby Scott, based on her own experiences of autism with a demand avoidant profile, this pioneering book, written in collaboration with esteemed author Rebecca Westcott, has been widely praised for its realistic portrayal of autism. This book should be very encouraging and helpful to kids who relate to Tally's situations at home and at school, and it is a great tool to help build understanding and empathy among family members, friends, and classmates of children with autism. But in spite of being based on the real life experience of a girl with autism, it doesn't ring true.

Importantly, the book also includes the fact that this is just one child's experiences - it won't be the same for every child with autism but it provides a fascinating insight which can help teachers and adults immensely to support children in similar situations. but I do think the authors' intentions were to give people pause and make them think a little deeper about the subject, and I did do that. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.It’s extremely important these MG books are available for kids to read and gain an understanding about people that may be around them and how they may/may not think/feel/act differently - and that’s ok! However, the book as a whole wasn't the most engaging--the plot is rather slow for much of it, and the Tally's Autism Facts sections, while informative, are also a bit info-dump-y, and I wasn't ever sure if the story was supposed to take place in the US or UK. We are even urged to intervene in her family dynamic so that her father accepts and understands her more convincingly. I could understand that given the fact I found myself getting confused at events too - such as wanting to lecture Layla on why the fairground ride isn’t scary when everyone always expects Tally to behave the way neurotypicals do.

The reader is supposed to believe that the main character, Tally, is a mainstreamed student at a public middle school, but the way her behavior is portrayed, there is no way she would be mainstreamed, and particularly without an IEP and all her teachers knowing what her needs were, which is not the case in this story. This book is a combination of present-tense, third-person prose and short diary entries from the perspective of Tally, the autistic main character. I think it is okay that I couldn’t relate to Tally’s experiences in their entirety, especially being really high masking and late diagnosed - but I don’t think this is explained in the book and many neurotypical people aren’t exposed to the discourse our community tries to produce to raise awareness because the internet can be such an echo chamber.

She is continually losing it when her family members tell her to do anything, like hurry up and get ready for school, and then blaming them because they KNOW that if they tell her to do something, she is unable to do it. Puedes sacar muchas enseñanzas de este libro, no solo aprender a cómo tratar a una persona con autismo, sino a cómo tratar a la gente en general. It is really lovely to know that this story is one written from the perspective of real child with autism. When she starts her new school, everything is very big and overwhelming and she has to find ways to hide her autism, but what if she doesn't have to?