Ultimately 3.5 stars.

I'm torn on this one. I feel like the information that is presented in this book is helpful to kind of understand some of the thought processes that Naoki has when dealing with traits that annoy or frustrate the neuraltypical people around him.

There's 2 things that really knocked this book down for me a bit, though.

1) The use of "we" when speaking on his thoughts. Now I realize that this was originally published in 2005 and a lot of our understanding of the spectrum has changed since that time. But for people who are trying to understand or learn about autism, I feel like the generalization of "we" will be hard to read by families who have loved ones that are in a different part of the spectrum.

2) I get that Naoki is a very smart kiddo. But I really don't feel confident to declare that he wrote this book at the age of 13. Now, I realize that this book was translated from Japanese and I would be highly interested to see if there were some embellishments added during the translating process.i just worry that for people with no knowledge on this subject will have high expectations for their loved ones that could cause more issues.