Joe Reads to Me: 1-10

Joe, who is now 22, still struggles with reading. At least out loud. He spends a fair amount of time reading news on the internet and doing fact-checking on Wikipedia, and he seems to get accurate information out of that, so I'd guess that his reading comprehension is actually pretty good. I am pretty sure that at least most autistic people have a greater passive vocabulary than an active one, though, so that's to be expected. 

But I always try to expand his world, so when he showed a lot of interest in the Unbroken movie and when I found a "young adult" version of the book, I got it and asked Joe if he would like to read it to my. He was game.

And he was very interested in the book, and seeing the movie helped him to follow it. But it was pretty obvious that the vocabulary was difficult for him, so when he finished reading it to me (it took about six months), I took him to the bookstore so that we could pick out his next Read-to-Me book together. After considering a number of titles and sampling their wares, he wanted to go for Fantastic Four: War Zone by Greg Cox. Which seemed like a good idea, since comic book characters are high interest items for Joe (and for me as well), and I didn't expect the reading level to be too high. But it turned out to be more than high enough, and there were times when Joe really struggled with it.

So I put my thinking cap on. Where could you find high interest, long form stories which were written on a simpler level and used vocabulary that wasn't monosyllabic but wasn't too complex, either? 

And then I remembered The Great Illustrated Classics line. 

I'd read a hell of a lot of those books when I was a kid, and I'm sure that it inspired me to read many of the classics at a young age. I was surprised and delighted to see that the company was still in business and that they have 69 titles in print. (At least I count 69 titles. The website says that there are only 66, but I've counted them 3 times.) I was not so delighted to see that the books cost $7.55 each . . . plus tax ( 0.45 each) and shipping ($6.50 for two books and $1 for each additional book). That's kind of pricey for me. But Half-Price Books came to the rescue. I began to discover several GIC books on their kids bargain shelves . . . most of them for $1.00. So I got in the habit of checking that shelf overtime I went to the store.

The first one I bought was King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. And Joe not only enjoyed it, he was able to handle it much more adeptly than he could our first two books. And so we were off, and, as you can see in the picture above, we've now finished eight GICs. 

Our 7th GIC book, Stories From the Bible, was actually Jacqueline's book, but she asked him if he wanted to borrow it. Just about the time we were finishing it, I bought the GIC edition of Little Women for Jacqueline, and when Joe saw it, he asked her if he could borrow it. It doesn't get much sweeter than that, does it? And he just finished reading it to me last Friday night.

We still have plenty of GIC books to go--I've managed to lay in a pretty good supply. But Joe was a big fan of the movie and subsequent television show Shooter, so when I saw the novel Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter (which is the basis for both), I picked it up for him. For a dollar, btw. And he wants to read that next, so we're taking a little break from the GIC. But we'll mos def be back asap.

This whole deal of Joe reading to me has become a great joy for me. It also gives us fuel for conversation, and I think reading to someone establishes a very special kind of bond. (I've tried to get Jacqueline to read to me, too, but she's not at all interested in that, alas.)