Martian in the Playground

understanding the schoolchild with Asperger's syndrome

Clare Sainsbury

This is the author’s first-hand account of having Asperger's Syndrome. Sainsbury shows the reader right from the start what it must be like to see the world in a unique and particular way. She describes feeling as she was growing up "as if I didn't know the rules".

She recalls being bullied, and being in trouble, but not understanding why. We hear from different voices, too, as others remember and tell us what it was like to be a child who doesn't seem to 'fit'.

So, it is a book written from the inside - packed full of ideas and thoughts about what helps, and what definitely does not! It tells those of us on the outside to recognize that people with Asperger's Syndrome don't need special equipment, just understanding.

Sainsbury reports that as one in seventy three-years-olds are being diagnosed with autism or Asperger's, it is vitally important that we all begin to know more about this syndrome. She gives plenty of factual information, too, plus resources and recommended further reading. Teachers, especially, will find they can learn a lot from this book.

But everyone will be moved by the author's account of her childhood where she believed that what was wrong with her must be so awful no one would talk about it. Plus at the same time trying to convince herself that as everyone told her, there was nothing wrong and that she could be like everyone else if only she tried harder. "The fear and misery that this caused should be easy to imagine." After reading Martian in the Playground it is all too easy and painful for the reader to understand what it must be like to be a child with this syndrome.

As well as Asperger's Syndrome Clare Sainsbury has a First in philosophy and politics from New College, Oxford. She now works part-time with children and teens with autism. She also runs a website and e-mail support group for university students with Asperger's Syndrome and high-functioning autism.

© Jill Curtis 2002

published by Lucky Duck Publishing  price £12.00

and is available from    ISBN  18733942087