A Kind of Spark

"This one was shortlisted for the 2021 Great Reads Award in the junior category. The central character is Addie, an 11 year old girl who is autistic. The theme of autism has come up in the Great Reads Award before. In 2020 there was a title called The Space We’re In by Katya Balen and in 2018 we had Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig. In her schoolwork Addie gets involved with a project on witches and witchcraft and the treatment of witches in historical Scotland. The story is set in a small town outside Edinburgh. Historically there is a lot of literature that draws on this particular theme. On the 2019 Great Reads Award shortlist we had a title called The Burning by Laura Bates, which was about the witch hunt and sexual shaming and revenge porn. What drew me to this novel is the way it was an eye opener for me in terms of the lived experience of somebody who is autistic. The opening scenes depict Addie in the classroom and she’s having a really hard time from her teacher. I supposed maybe the teacher is a caricature in a sense, but then this is not Roald Dahl , it’s meant to be read as reality fiction. It really got to me, that the teacher would be so hurtful. What really struck me is that when I was teaching, I didn’t have any understanding of autism. The book explains autism as a way of living, different to the neurotypical way of living. I did on occasion have neurodivergent people in my classroom, and it now baffles me how little I understood of their lived experience in front of me. You mentioned about this novel being about an 11 year old and it being literature for tweens, but it is a novel for me, for adults. It’s a great read for anybody in the neurotypical community. It’s a novel for people in general, it isn’t particularly a novel for the neurodivergent reader. Yes but for me, as a reader, what’s most important here is the way the lived experience is revealed, the sensitivity towards light, towards sound, the depth of the emotional senses as well as the physical senses, that all is new to me. Maybe it was a generational thing, but it was shocking to me that I went through the whole of my teaching career without having a sense of that. Perhaps mainstream teachers do nowadays. I had students with learning difficulties, dyslexia, ADHD and visual impairments and I sought out professional guidance in that, but I did not seek out professional development in terms of the experience of autistic students in the classroom. Obviously, I am not saying that young adult fiction is your guide to how you practice in the classroom. I’m talking about how this novel opened my mind to the realisation that I needed training and greater understanding as a professional working with youngsters who are autistic. C. S. Lewis said that no book is really worth reading at the age of ten, which is not equally worth reading at the age of fifty. Literature for children and young adults shouldn’t be dismissed as just for youngsters, because it speaks so much to an adult readership as well. Reading enables us to experience things that we may not in real life. There is a widely accepted position that reading fiction builds empathy, understanding and tolerance. By experiencing Addie’s way of being we gain insights into life in her shoes and can begin to develop an understanding of it. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I would also like to mention that for Addie the school library is a haven of peace, everything is organised, the librarian speaks quietly to her. It’s a place for her to be calm and reset herself. There’s a growing body of research around the idea of a school library as a safe haven. Of course, when you advocate for school libraries you don’t say it’s because you want a safe haven in school, but it’s an unexpected benefit. Throughout this novel we see how Addie has a deeply felt sense that had she lived in the time of the Witchcraft Act she would have been persecuted and executed for being different. Those parallels that she draws with the witches of the past, and the intensity of the emotion that she feels in the story, I think that’s really nicely brought out. I don’t know if that activism prompted this particular treatment as a theme or not. From what I’ve read, the author was coming from the angle of a neurodivergent person and her own personal experience, and communicating that. I am aware of some Irish language documentaries about women who were executed or persecuted as witches in Ireland but I’m not aware of a campaign in Ireland similar to Witches of Scotland. Yes, that’s lovely. At first there seems to be tension between Addie’s twin sisters. Nina, the sister who isn’t autistic, lives her own life, pursues her own interests in her own way. And then that balance with Keedie, the sister who is autistic, whom Addie idolises. We see the relationships from Addie’s perspective, the younger character who doesn’t always see what’s going on in the grown up world of her older sisters. But when it comes down to it, the twin sisters are very close."