| Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome: A User Guide to Adolescence | 
 enlarge | Author: Luke Jackson
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: £12.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 4235
Media: Paperback
Edition: New title
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.5
ISBN: 1843100983
Dewey Decimal Number: 618.9289820092
EAN: 9781843100980
ASIN: 1843100983
Publication Date: August 1, 2002
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 16-19 of 19 | | « PREV | | |
 Compulsive, funny and a very moving book to cherish July 31, 2003
16 out of 21 found this review helpful
What can i say! this book for me was extremley beneficial as a mum of twins and one of them being diagnosed on the autistic spectrum. Luke you are a complete star your book was full of helpful ideas and things that will stick in my head on what it feels like being 'gifted' i like to call it that too.
I laughed and cried reading this book alot i now have an increased insight into my sons little world and how he has to cope without being able to tell me. I also watched Luke and his very special family on BBC night and this family are truly amazing i think their mum is absolutely outstanding she is a credit to motherhood but the whole family were a joy to watch for a little while and share some time of their very special life together - WELL DONE FAB FAMILY
 not so nice behind the scenes July 24, 2003
13 out of 101 found this review helpful
Now that I have cleared the order processes for raising this in the Scottish parliament, I feel confident enough to write it here. It won't be deleted or else that will be raised as an interference in Scottish democratic process.
2 groups advertised in this book as supportive of the health problems described in it, are backbiting factionally controlled groups that reject people very trivially. That makes this book an ethically shabby violation of autistic spectrum people. The adult interests behind it are exploiting a child to hurt and violate the public in breach of public health.
Luke's mother is a member of both groups and knows about all this, but has not withdrawn the book from sale to delete the groups because of it, and nor has the publisher. GFCF-KIDS-UK, by banning people for no known reason after only a week of membership, shows it wants to discourage some types of questions and has something harmful to hide about the gfcf diet. An he-special-uk member tipped me off that there are fanatics strong in the gfcf diet movement who treat parents like traitors if they keep their kids on casein for the important reason of allergy to soya, so they would be undernourished unless they stayed on casein.
HE-SPECIAL-UK is controlled by the type of home educating parents who want to control their kids' lives, and won't tolerate the expression of views on the kids' side, like that an education bill will beneficially help kids' life choices be asserted against their parents' for them. Excluding me for that reason, and a hate vendetta in other groups followed, was an attempt to gag Scottish democracy by itimidation. In 4 months Jacqui has not stopped this group being advertised to the public through Luke. So she, who edited Luke's writing and formatted it into chapters, as the Times revealed, can't really mean any of the things he wrote about "different is cool" and not being one who follows the crowd. She followed the crowd.
Luke, who is really close to his mother, has got to choose between the honesty of all he wrote, so appreciated by the other reviewers' kids here, and the adults who gave him the opportunity to write it. If that choice is PAINFUL for him, then readers for whom his success and personality cult are PAINFUL may start to feel better about themselves again and not that they missed out by not having the CIRCUMSTANTIAL LUCK that got him published throughout the country. I'm referring here to the question of destroyed child authors.
As I have told the publisher, until public awareness is forced that there are destroyed child authors, Luke is just being used to torture the people he wanted to help. Most children are prevented by something this book speaks out against, school homework pressure, from having enough control of their own spare time to become authors. Since Lindsay Brown in 1978 all the pitifully few child authors who have emerged successfully have had some special circumstance in their life, outside school, to protect them from homework ruining it for them. Luke obviously had the adults interested in his dietary problem: they started his writing career. Kenneth Hall is home educated. Charlotte Church had her musical agents and whatever. I managed to get announced as a child author twice in early eighties Welsh newspapers before homework abuse destroyed my chance of achieving it, and on this historical evidence I invite all destroyed child authors upset by Luke's rave reviews as "unique" and "special" etc to speak out and not to tragically fear no one will believe you were a child author.
"Tell someone if you are bullied." - predictable and not unique at all, nor convincing to anyone who has tried it.
Dating tips written by a boy who has never had a date, on info obtained from his sisters. That means he needed sisters or he couldn't have written it, and they should be credited as co-authors. "If she laughs at you, pick yourself up and get over it." Only a kid with the backing of a strong comfortable Aspie support scene would write something so unreal.
Don't commit suicide because "people will be upset", we must make the best of "the lives we are given." Anyone with a sense of social justice should agree that no more obscene concept exists than "the lives we are given", and how dare the luckiest child author in modern history push the concept at any destroyed child author or any rejected adult author. Personally I honour as a martyr the author whose suicide after undeserved rejections for a book that won a posthumous award was described in the Independent 16-11-01.
Advice on how to cope with homework - find a quiet place. Didn't work for me with ADHD, it's clutching at straws advice.
"The world is full of idiots/illogical rubbish". Of course I'm jealous of the kid given the opportunity to write that. It's not that no kid has ever had Luke's feelings towards normal society before, which is how his reviewers portray it. It's that he was in the right place at the right time, the beginning of taking the voice of Aspies seriously, and if any earlier kids offered a publisher exactly the same type of book they were laughed at. Before the Aspie era only fiction, not fact, was usually open to children to write, and yet idiots will write "It's not often that a 14 year old boy gets a book published", doing a horrific painful injustice to all hurt 14 year old boys who lived too early to get factual writing published or who had too much homework to get fiction published.
Of course Luke was right to take his opportunity, and carries the ghosts of generations of nonconformist kids on his shoulders. Potentially he marks a great historical moment - but only if the message is genuine and idiots are not allowed to spoil it. The test of that is: you must always, in every case, back wronged individuals against groups, no matter how inexpedient it is.
"If you find yourself sinking, believe in yourself." Exactly what I'm doing by writing this after abuse by the people around him!!!
What a brilliant insight- Thanks Luke! January 3, 2003
21 out of 30 found this review helpful
This book should be recommended reading for all teachers, doctors and those who have called my son 'weird'. The whole family has read it and it has made a difference in my handling of many hazardous moments. The next thing is to implement the gluten and casein free diet, my son suggested it himself. He is also looking for a local Tae kwondo club. Thanks again Luke.
Freaks, Geeks and Aspergers Syndrome October 19, 2002
26 out of 34 found this review helpful
A very enjoyable and entertaining read. This book allowed me to see things from the perspective of a person with A.S. and provided lovely ideas how to help people navigate in our complicated world. Luke writes with humour - despite what he thinks, he writes with maturity beyond being "only thirteen years old"! I am sure his "Rules of the game - do's and dont's of dating"! together with his "Top tips to enhance your chance"!! will be useful to other A.S. teenagers - it made me smile too!
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