Catherine is your typical 12 year old. All she wants is a normal life with normal friends, not people who look at her funny or make fun of her autistic brother David. She loves him, but thats quite hard at times when she is embarrassed by so much of what he does. The only way to bring normality to her life is to make up rules, which she keeps with her in the back of her sketch book. Rules such as No Toys in the Fish Tank, Pantless Brothers are Not my Problem are part of her everyday life. A new girl moves into the neighborhood and Catherine finally feels that she will have a chance at a new life. But will David ruin this too? Just when Catherine is overly wrapped up in David and Kristi, she meets a young boy at her brothers therapy clinic and the two hit it off in quite a unique way; opening Catherines eyes to a life outside of the rules. I enjoyed this book and its overall message of acceptance.

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Catherine is your typical 12 year old. All she wants is a normal life with normal friends, not people who look at her funny or make fun of her autistic brother David. She loves him, but that's quite hard at times when she is embarrassed by so much of what he does. The only way to bring normality to her life is to make up rules, which she keeps with her in the back of her sketch book. Rules such as âNo Toys in the Fish Tankâ, âPantless Brothers are Not my Problemâ are part of her everyday life.

A new girl moves into the neighborhood and Catherine finally feels that she will have a chance at a new life. But will David ruin this too?

Just when Catherine is overly wrapped up in David and Kristi, she meets a young boy at her brother's therapy clinic and the two hit it off in quite a unique way; opening Catherine's eyes to a life outside of the rules.

I enjoyed this book and its overall message of acceptance. Amazon Review: http://tinyurl.com/254khr

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My 12yo daughter read this and she's not always impressed with my selections but this one rated an A+.

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Reviewed by Me for TeensReadToo.com

You can always tell when you're reading a book that has a basis in truth. With RULES, author Cynthia Lord writes about what it's like to live with autism, and she should know, since she has an autistic child.

That ring of truth is there, in every word, when you read the story of twelve-year old Catherine and her autistic younger brother, David.David hates loud noises. If there's a cloud in the sky, he has to take his red umbrella with him. If his dad says he'll be home at five o'clock, David starts going crazy at five-oh-one. He likes to rewind his movie of Thomas the Tank Engine to his favorite part, over and over and over again. His favorite place to visit is the video store, where he'll even lay on the floor to read the back of the movie box a stranger is holding in his hand. And he knows all the words to Arnold Lobel's FROG AND TOAD.

For Catherine, though, it's a much different story. She hates the way people stare at her brother, or even worse, refuse to look at him at all. She's jealous of the time David gets to spend, one-on-one, with their pharmacist father. She hates David's rules, the strict adherence to which he is obsessed with them, and yet she makes new rules for him every time she thinks of something else he needs to know.

Catherine copes by drawing, and one day she decides to draw the boy in the wheelchair who is in the waiting room with her at Occupational Therapy. David goes there once a week to work with a therapist, and so does the boy who doesn't speak but instead uses a book of word cards to communicate. When Catherine offers to make Jason, the boy in the wheelchair, some new cards with pictures, an unlikely friendship is born. Catherine is also excited about Kristi, her new next-door neighbor, but soon finds out that friendship is a complicated matter.

How do you protect a brother that often annoys you? How can you be friends with the beautiful girl next door and yet be ashamed to admit your friend Jason doesn't talk and is in a wheelchair? How do you make your father understand that you matter, too? How do you tell your mother that even though David needs his own words, Frog and Toad is a special communication between a brother and sister that love each other? RULES isn't just a book about autism, but rather a look into the complexities of a family relationship. An excellent read for anyone who has ever had to deal with someone who is just a little bit different than everyone else.

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