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Serving Teens and Adults on the Autism Spectrum: A Guide for Libraries
Autism spectrum disorder is a lifelong condition, but programs and services are mostly for children. As this population ages and the number of adults receiving autism diagnoses grows, are public libraries serving this group? Serving Teens and Adults on the Autism Spectrum offers practical strategies for delivering better service to individuals with autism, from library programming to technology, collections, library volunteers, and the information desk.
Relying on feedback and help from the autism community in her area, Carrie Rogers-Whitehead created programs for children, teens, and young adults on the autism spectrum. In this book, she shares advice on developing programs that focus on teamwork, transitions, and social skills. She explains best practices for reference interviews and teaches readers how their libraries can partner with nonprofit and government entities to develop workforce skills and connect adults with autism to jobs. Ready-made program activities for teens and adults with autism make it easy for libraries to better serve this often misunderstood group.
Relying on feedback and help from the autism community in her area, Carrie Rogers-Whitehead created programs for children, teens, and young adults on the autism spectrum. In this book, she shares advice on developing programs that focus on teamwork, transitions, and social skills. She explains best practices for reference interviews and teaches readers how their libraries can partner with nonprofit and government entities to develop workforce skills and connect adults with autism to jobs. Ready-made program activities for teens and adults with autism make it easy for libraries to better serve this often misunderstood group.
- GenresProfessional Development
168 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2020
12 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 3, 2024
I’m autistic and I don’t like this book.
1) it passively frames autism as something to overcome, that people with autism should strive to behave, think, and want what neurotypical people do
2) it uses ‘sex’ instead of gender, and only mentions cisgender male and female people, despite ~25% of autistic people being genderdiverse [*there is a tiny box much later in the book that mentions this statistic but doesn't expand on what that means in terms of impact on service]
3) it uses person-first language with the excuse that it is ‘required’ by the AMA style guide, despite quoting someone directly describing how autism affects their whole life and is not detachable from who they are nor a disability to be viewed negatively (ie. they are an autistic person not a person with autism)
4) the author herself is not autistic, when there are definitely autistic people working in libraries
5) this book focuses only on those with severe developmental disabilities, acknowledging that there are “high functioning” autistics but that this book is not for them—because like everyone else in the world she is under the impression that, as a high functioning autistic, we don’t need the same supports and help, when in fact research shows we are disproportionately affected by depression, anxiety, etc
6) implies that most autistic people have sub-par intelligence and tend to act inappropriately sexually in public spaces (a misrepresentation both by assuming this is ‘most’ autistic people and by perpetuating stereotypes people already believe about autistic people)—while this definitely occurs on occasion with *some* autistic people, this book makes it sound like its the norm/to be expected
7) focuses on non-verbal, mostly non-verbal, and intellectually disabled autistics with explicitly stated exclusion of “high functioning” autistics but still uses quotes and discussions from those “high functioning” autistics as examples
8) Reliance on a single autistic librarian’s experiences/quotations to validate suggestions and arguments proposed in the book, despite saying in the preface and introduction that autism is a spectrum and even using the phrase ‘if you’ve met an autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person’.
9) Quoting the same passages from the same sources multiple times throughout the book. Also only using one source for each subject (any talk of sexuality or puberty is only quoted from ‘When Young People With Intellectual Disabilities and Autism Hit Puberty’) which again excludes transgender people and queer people more generally
10) use of vague topical quotes that are not 100% related to what the author is talking about and therefore don’t really exemplify or expand on what is being discussed, also often quoted within the sentence(s) incorrectly
11) bad grammar/punctuation; could have used another proofread
12) last sentence of the second last chapter finally mentions how disability is a product of society and that the problem is not the individual—meanwhile the book up until this point mainly focuses on the ‘bad’ behaviors of autistic people/how their behavior can negatively impact others regardless of it being intentional or not
For whatever reason, I forced myself to keep reading this book until the end. Once you have the entire picture it's not quite as painful, but as both an autistic person who uses libraries and an autistic person who works in a library, I feel excluded. Libraries are a space in which day homes and care homes plan visits with groups of autistic people who need caregivers, so in that sense this book is helpful. But I would argue that this book is only helpful for that group, the "visibly autistic" or "visibly disabled".
When it comes to dealing with the "high functioning" autistics like myself, this book is almost useless. Because we often mask so well in public, most people don't know we're autistic, and might not believe us if we were to tell them we were. It gives the impression we are doing fine without supports when in fact we are struggling, and if you could see us at home, you would see we might not be doing well at all. But beyond the sensory-adjustments sections, these struggles, even within the lens of being in a library space, are not really addressed. The sole sentence in the entire book that redeems the book for me at all is this one: “Instead of looking at accommodations as a barrier, an inconvenience, see those shifts and changes as getting one step closer to all the compromises being made every minute of the day by a person with autism.” Because 'masking' is really just us pretending to be neurotypical for the comfort of everyone around us, and it is both exhausting and demeaning. I wish this book would have gone into further detail than it did about all the things a masking autistic person does to mask and how much of an impact that has and how it makes us feel at the end of the day, or when interacting with neurotypical people.
1) it passively frames autism as something to overcome, that people with autism should strive to behave, think, and want what neurotypical people do
2) it uses ‘sex’ instead of gender, and only mentions cisgender male and female people, despite ~25% of autistic people being genderdiverse [*there is a tiny box much later in the book that mentions this statistic but doesn't expand on what that means in terms of impact on service]
3) it uses person-first language with the excuse that it is ‘required’ by the AMA style guide, despite quoting someone directly describing how autism affects their whole life and is not detachable from who they are nor a disability to be viewed negatively (ie. they are an autistic person not a person with autism)
4) the author herself is not autistic, when there are definitely autistic people working in libraries
5) this book focuses only on those with severe developmental disabilities, acknowledging that there are “high functioning” autistics but that this book is not for them—because like everyone else in the world she is under the impression that, as a high functioning autistic, we don’t need the same supports and help, when in fact research shows we are disproportionately affected by depression, anxiety, etc
6) implies that most autistic people have sub-par intelligence and tend to act inappropriately sexually in public spaces (a misrepresentation both by assuming this is ‘most’ autistic people and by perpetuating stereotypes people already believe about autistic people)—while this definitely occurs on occasion with *some* autistic people, this book makes it sound like its the norm/to be expected
7) focuses on non-verbal, mostly non-verbal, and intellectually disabled autistics with explicitly stated exclusion of “high functioning” autistics but still uses quotes and discussions from those “high functioning” autistics as examples
8) Reliance on a single autistic librarian’s experiences/quotations to validate suggestions and arguments proposed in the book, despite saying in the preface and introduction that autism is a spectrum and even using the phrase ‘if you’ve met an autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person’.
9) Quoting the same passages from the same sources multiple times throughout the book. Also only using one source for each subject (any talk of sexuality or puberty is only quoted from ‘When Young People With Intellectual Disabilities and Autism Hit Puberty’) which again excludes transgender people and queer people more generally
10) use of vague topical quotes that are not 100% related to what the author is talking about and therefore don’t really exemplify or expand on what is being discussed, also often quoted within the sentence(s) incorrectly
11) bad grammar/punctuation; could have used another proofread
12) last sentence of the second last chapter finally mentions how disability is a product of society and that the problem is not the individual—meanwhile the book up until this point mainly focuses on the ‘bad’ behaviors of autistic people/how their behavior can negatively impact others regardless of it being intentional or not
For whatever reason, I forced myself to keep reading this book until the end. Once you have the entire picture it's not quite as painful, but as both an autistic person who uses libraries and an autistic person who works in a library, I feel excluded. Libraries are a space in which day homes and care homes plan visits with groups of autistic people who need caregivers, so in that sense this book is helpful. But I would argue that this book is only helpful for that group, the "visibly autistic" or "visibly disabled".
When it comes to dealing with the "high functioning" autistics like myself, this book is almost useless. Because we often mask so well in public, most people don't know we're autistic, and might not believe us if we were to tell them we were. It gives the impression we are doing fine without supports when in fact we are struggling, and if you could see us at home, you would see we might not be doing well at all. But beyond the sensory-adjustments sections, these struggles, even within the lens of being in a library space, are not really addressed. The sole sentence in the entire book that redeems the book for me at all is this one: “Instead of looking at accommodations as a barrier, an inconvenience, see those shifts and changes as getting one step closer to all the compromises being made every minute of the day by a person with autism.” Because 'masking' is really just us pretending to be neurotypical for the comfort of everyone around us, and it is both exhausting and demeaning. I wish this book would have gone into further detail than it did about all the things a masking autistic person does to mask and how much of an impact that has and how it makes us feel at the end of the day, or when interacting with neurotypical people.
September 20, 2022
I really appreciated this book. Although the author was not an autistic librarian she took her time to interview patrons and library-workers with autism. However, I did find some of the wording and language used in this book to be problematic. The first chapter really turned me off to the rest of the book and I struggled to read on. However, once I did read on I found that Carrie Rogers-Whitehead provided many wonderful examples of programming, outreach, and partnerships that can strengthen a library's outreach to autistic patrons and their families. I would highly suggest that librarians read this book, but emphasize that they read it along with first-person autistic memoirs and accounts because some of the language feels outdated and disability advocates are moving in different directions.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews