Roy Frederick Brown, born in Vancouver B.C., was deputy headmaster of the Helen Allison School for Autistic Children, Gravesend, Kent, from 1969-75.
"Among major children's writers of the 1970s, Roy Brown was one particularly open to his times, in tune with their issues and concerns and, while the readability and human interest of his stories guarantee a wide readership, the settings indicate a conscious desire to offer the non-academic urban child a means of identification. The years brought development in technique but not deviation from city backgrounds and characters at risk or disadvantage in modern society." [source: Peggy Heeks in Twentieth Century Children's Writers (Macmillan, 1978).
This was the first book I ever read as a child. It's a story of empathy and although I don't know of any adaptations of the story in film or TV, the storyline is a vivid childhood memory of mine. I got this book from a local charity shop in the early nineties.