Book Review- Rules

Lord, Cynthia. “Rules.” New York: Scholastic Press, 2006.

Rules is a contemporary realistic fiction novel for young adults that walks through the life of Catherine, a twelve year old girl dealing with the ups and downs of living with her brother, David who has autism. Getting through to David has not always been easy, so Catherine takes it upon herself to create rules for David to try to eliminate as many embarrassing moments (for herself more than anything) as possible. For instance, “do not chew with your mouth open”, “sometimes people are laughing at you and other times with you”, and “when in public keep your pants on”. The book takes an interesting twist however when Catherine is forced to spend her entire summer attending David’s weekly physical therapy sessions. Here she meets Jason, a young boy whose disability is not referenced, but who must use a wheelchair and is unable to speak and therefore must communicate through a communication board. The two become good friends and in the end are faced with dealing with the reactions that people outside of the clinic have when they see the two together.

The story conveys messages of acceptance towards children with disabilities. In my opinion it was very important for the book to come from Catherine’s point of view because it shows how a disability affects an entire family unit, not simply the person with the disability. Catherine’s family needed her to be responsible for David at an early age and in doing so she learned compassion for all people. An element that I appreciated from the story is that there was a great deal of focus on the frustration that accompanies people’s negative reactions towards David and Catherine and Jason’s developing friendship and not so much frustration with David and Jason due to their disabilities.

This book was written by Cynthia Lord, who has first hand experience dealing with issues surrounding autism as she is a mother of a young son who has autism. She says, “I wrote Rules to explore some of my own questions about living with someone who sees the world so differently than I do, but also to show a full experience of family life with a child with autism: the happy moments, the heartbreaking ones, the ones that make me laugh” (back cover jacket). I would definitely recommend this book to other and it definitely has its place within my library.