Rules by Cynthia Lord

Rules by Cynthia Lord

 

Lord, C. (2006). Rules. New York, NY: Scholastic Press.

Realistic Fiction; Disabilities; Chapter Book; Newberry Honor Book; Schneider Family Book Award

Rules is a book about a twelve year old girl named Catherine who’s younger brother, David, has autism. Catherine struggles with the fact that her brother is not “normal”, constantly worrying about her family’s image to other people. When a new girl moves in next door, Catherine tries her best to make things seem like they were normal with David, not wanting her neighbor to think they were strange. It wasn’t until she became close to Jason, a disabled boy who attended the same clinic as David, when she finally realized that it wasn’t all about her image.

This book does a great job at expressing the feelings of a person who is closely connected to another person with autism. Many stories often tell how the child with autism feels, or how the parents of an autistic child feel. When parents have a child with autism, they often forget to think about how their siblings may feel about the condition. Instead of trying to explain how David must feel, or how it feels to have a child with autism, this book gives the perspective of the sister. Catherine gives her side of story, revealing how it must feel to have a brother or sister with a disability, especially at a young age. Catherine is at the pre-teen age where image becomes more important than the mind. Children at this age begin to worry more about their outside appearance and image taken on by other people, than about their true personalities and attributes. Rules would be a great book to use with a lesson about accepting your own differences, or dealing with the things that stick out in your life. It would be an ideal lesson for the upper elementary and middle school grades, where children are beginning to worry more about what makes them different than their peers.  This could be a way to get the students talking about how certain circumstances in their lives make them feel. They may not get the chance to express these feelings at home with their parents, such as in Catherine’s case, so giving them the option to do so at school may ease their mind and help them coup.