A Friend Like Simon: A Friend Like Simon (Special Stories Series) Paperback – Illustrated, August 12, 2008

It’s a great book for helping to teach kids about autism! I read it to my son’s first grade class with his teacher’s approval, and the kids all enjoyed it and listened well. We used parts of the story to talk about how everyone is different, and then discussed how we can all try to include others even when their differences can be difficult to understand! My first grader has autism and is in a general education classroom, but none of the kids really know him yet, so this book was a great way to start teaching kids about autism awareness and being inclusive and not exclusive. My son’s teacher borrowed it to share with the other teachers too!

I am a special education teacher and purchased this book to read to the general education classes. The book is cute and good to promote inclusion and acceptance.

I hesitated to buy this based on all of the reviews about the "Horrible Hettie" character. I'll get to that at the end of my review, but first of all I really liked this! I thought this was great at showing a neurotypical child's process of being introduced to someone with autism for the first time, being honest about not understanding his differences/hesitant to befriend him, then to growing comfortable and realizing his autism is just a normal part of Simon. Not many books I've tried have this part of the story included (not understanding someone's differences and being reluctant to be friends with them). But this is a very natural reaction, to be afraid of things we don't understand. This is a teachable moment! I think it's great that this book's narrator was honest about that, and then continued to show that he moved onto easily accepting Simon because he realized autism is no big deal. I didn't hear any "I learned he has autism BUT we can still be friends" type of terminology, which I'm grateful for! I'm excited to read this to my students and start discussions about autism and other differences in our classroom.With "Horrible Hettie," there's some reviews that make it sound like all of the kids team up to exclude her at the end of the book. This could be assumed based on the last page/picture, but it's not explicitly said. I agree that it'd be nice to have some resolution between Hettie and the kids, but I just read this page and went onto start a discussion with my students about what Hettie should have done, how the students could have helped Hettie be nicer, why she's mean to everyone, etc. This page could even be skipped if you don't want to go there at all.I'd recommend this to anyone looking for books to start conversations on accepting autism. At the end of the story the narrator says something like, "even though Simon acts/talks differently, he's just the same as everyone else at school." I love the inclusion and normalization!

this is a great intro book about ASD. my youngest Simon is autistic so this book was a perfect fit. his teacher read it to his class for me and she said he understood it was about him. He just finished first grade and is almost 8.

I bought 5 books off amazon the sane day, all were books for how to help a child understand autism, I was SOOOOO upset when I received the others.....they were horrible.... weren't helpfully at all. I immidialtly wrote amazon & returning ... when this book arrived I was sadly just assuming the worst so I open the book up and started reading much to my surprise this was actually an amazing book and actually told autism very well much like all the other books that I had bought so I can't stress enough if you're going to get a book get this one!!! Don't make my mistake!!!!

Such a cute and well written book. I've used it as a school counselor to go into a class with a kiddo that has Autism and used it to help his peers understand him better. I appreciate this book and will be using it as a resource over and over.

I read this to my austic son's class every fall (K and 1st grade so far). Its a great introduction for kids who know someone with autism, but might not know how to befriend them. Love it! My son has been embraced by his class every year and I think this helped start things off right.

This book is beautiful for Autism families to gift to their child's classroom, or a very observant four year old neighbor who notices our son is amazing.

I was really pleased with the book which I ordered for my great nephew. The colours were clear and the story cute. I know Simon will be delighted!

Me ha encantado . Un libro q ensena a los niños a respetar a personas distintas a ellos . Y q pueden ser amigos

I was looking for some thing to read to my 5 and 6 year old daughters, that would help them deal with their feelings about their older brother, who has Asperger's.This book was perfect, helped them see that we are not the only family with the issues we face, and they could identify with the characters. My daughter took it into school to share with her class, and the teacher liked it so much the school have now ordered a set.

Great book fot kids

Super book to explain Autism simply