What I am reading

When I used to teach high school back in the day, there were always a few select kids who were manga fanatics. I never understood the appeal, although I didn't look down on it as an art form. I personally found it bizarre and highly stylized. It was often difficult to get said students to draw anything other than these cartoon drawings with gigantic eyes.

Flash forward a some fifteen years later, and I find myself actually reading something manga, and being very moved by it. Of course it's probably the subject matter, which is autism, which draws me to it.

With the Light by Keiko Tobe is a series of graphic novels about raising a child with autism. It is a first hand account as far as I know, and I find it to be really amazingly good. It's definitely a newfangled way of reading for me, you start at the 'end' of the book and read from right to left, but I seem to be managing. It's a really different way of delving into a subject.

I am reading volume two only because borders books didn't have any of the others. It's about a family in Japan, with two children. The older son has autism and they have a younger daughter as well. I am up to the part where he is in elementary school. I have to say, for a comic book type setup, it's spot on in it's depiction of what it's like. I find myself on the verge of tears while reading, thinking 'yes, that's it!'. I like that kind of feeling.

I have blogging on the brain, and I wanted to share.