I have a comprehensive list of ‘Autism Positive’ books on my blog and, at the time of publishing this article, it contains nearly 200 books!. And whilst a list of 200 books is great for some people it can be a bit daunting if you want to read good books about autism but don’t know where to start. To help you get started I’ve selected my Top 10 Non-Academic Books About Autism and listed them below (in A-Z order by author name).
There is also a partner post to this list which is the Top 10 Academic Books About Autism.
Non-academic books tend to be more accessible than academic books (and often more affordable as academic books can sometimes be expensive).
For each book I’ve provided a description of each book and a link to purchase fom Amazon UK and BookShop. If you purchase a book via my links I receive a small commission (you pay no more).
Please note that some of the older books may use outdated terminology, but still have something useful to say.
TOP 10 NON-ACADEMIC BOOKS ABOUT AUTISM
- I Will Die on This Hill – Meghan Ashburn, Jules Edwards (Kieran is featured in this book)
- Sincerely, Your Autistic Child: What People on the Autism Spectrum Wish Their Parents Knew About Growing Up, Acceptance, and Identity – Emily Paige Ballou
- Loud Hands – Julia Bascomb
- Dr Luke Beardon – any (and all!) of his books
- Queerly Autistic: The Ultimate Guide For LGBTQIA+Teens On The Spectrum – Erin Ekins
- We’re Not Broken: Changing The Autism Conversation – Eric Garcia
- The New Normal: Autistic musings on the threat of a broken society – David Gray-Hammond
- Leaders Around Me: Autobiographies of Autistics who Type, Point, and Spell to Communicate – Edlyn Pena
- Our Autistic Lives: Personal Accounts from Autistic Adults Around the World Aged 20 to 70+ – Alex Ratcliffe (Kieran is featured in this book – under the pseudonym Skywalker)
- Untypical: How the world isn’t built for autistic people and what we should all do about it – Pete Wharmby
I Will Die on This Hill – Meghan Ashburn, Jules Edwards (Kieran is featured in this book)
BOOK DESCRIPTION
There is a significant divide between autistic advocates and parents of autistic children. Parents may feel attacked for their lack of understanding, and autistic adults who offer insight and guidance are also met with hostility and rejection.
Meghan Ashburn, a mother of two autistic boys, and Jules Edwards, an autistic parent, were no strangers to this tension and had an adversarial relationship when they first met. Over time, the two resolved their differences and are now co-conspirators in the pursuit of disability justice.
This book unites both perspectives, exploring the rift between these communities and encouraging them to work towards a common goal. It provides context to dividing issues, and the authors use their experience to illustrate where they’ve messed up, where they’ve got things right, and what they’ve learned along the way.
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Sincerely, Your Autistic Child: What People on the Autism Spectrum Wish Their Parents Knew About Growing Up, Acceptance, and Identity – Emily Paige Ballou
BOOK DESCRIPTION
A rare and diverse collection of autistic voices that highlights to parents the unique needs of girls and nonbinary people who are growing up with autism.
Most resources available for parents come out of the medical model of disability–from psychologists, educators, parents, and doctors–offering parents a narrow and technical approach to autism. Furthermore, it is widely believed that many autistic girls and women are underdiagnosed, which has further limited the information available regarding the unique needs of girls and nonbinary people with autism.
Sincerely, Your Autistic Child represents an authentic resource for parents written by people who understand this experience most, autistic people themselves. From childhood and education to gender identity and sexuality, this anthology of autistic contributors tackles the everyday challenges of growing up while honestly addressing the emotional needs, sensitivity, and vibrancy of autistic girls and nonbinary people. Written like letters to parents, the contributors reflect on what they have learned while growing up with autism and how parents can avoid common mistakes and overcome challenges while raising their child.
Sincerely, Your Autistic Child calls parents to action by raising awareness and redefining normal in order to help parents make their child feel truly accepted, valued, and celebrated for who they are.
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Loud Hands – Julia Bascomb
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking is a collection of essays written by and for Autistic people. Spanning from the dawn of the Neurodiversity movement to the blog posts of today, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking catalogues the experiences and ethos of the Autistic community and preserves both diverse personal experiences and the community’s foundational documents together side by side.
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Dr Luke Beardon – any (and all!) of his books.
For this list I’ve chosen his most recent book: Reasonable Adjustments for Autistic Children: How to Make Their World Better
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Autism acceptance has led to – at least, at surface level – an increased understanding of what autistic children need, and of what they find difficult to cope with. But is the world really making the kind of adjustments that would see your child truly thrive?
In Reasonable Adjustments for Autistic Children acclaimed and much-loved author and expert Dr Luke Beardon sets out the full scope of what he sees as the essential adjustments we need to make to our homes, our schools and the wider world in order to allow our autistic young people to reach their full potential and be genuinely comfortable in each and every environment.
From school uniform to train journeys and playdates, from dentists” surgeries to holiday resorts, Luke”s book offers practical measures for adapting every environment or sensory situation.
Absolutely essential reading for every parent of an autistic child, family member, caregiver, teacher or health and social care worker, this is a long-overdue book that has the potential to change the world for neurodiverse children, and for the children of generations to come.
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Queerly Autistic: The Ultimate Guide For LGBTQIA+Teens On The Spectrum – Erin Ekins
BOOK DESCRIPTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI CHILDREN’S & YA BOOK PRIZE
‘An essential guide’ LIZZIE HUXLEY-JONES
‘This book is perfect’ WENN LAWSON
‘One of the most important books in autism literature’ CHARLOTTE AMELIA POE
‘Wonderfully diverse and vibrant’ FOX FISHER
In this empowering and honest guide for LGBTQIA+ autistic teens, Erin Ekins gives you all the tools you need to figure out and explore your gender identity and sexuality.
From coming out to friends and family, staying safe in relationships and practicing safe sex, through to self-care and coping with bullying, being out and about in the LGBTQIA+ community and undergoing gender transition, this book is filled with essential information, advice, support and resources to help you on your journey, and also works as a primer on all things LGBTQIA+ for non-autistic teens who are just figuring it all out.
Written by an inspirational autistic queer woman, this is a must-read for every autistic teen wanting to live their very best queer life.
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We’re Not Broken: Changing The Autism Conversation – Eric Garcia
BOOK DESCRIPTION
“This book is a message from autistic people to their parents, friends, teachers, coworkers and doctors showing what life is like on the spectrum. It’s also my love letter to autistic people. For too long, we have been forced to navigate a world where all the road signs are written in another language.”
With a reporter’s eye and an insider’s perspective, Eric Garcia shows what it’s like to be autistic across America.
Garcia began writing about autism because he was frustrated by the media’s coverage of it: the myths that the disorder is caused by vaccines, the narrow portrayals of autistic people as white men working in Silicon Valley. His own life as an autistic person didn’t look anything like that. He is Latino, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and works as a journalist covering politics in Washington, DC. Garcia realized he needed to put into writing what so many autistic people have been saying for years–autism is a part of their identity, they don’t need to be fixed.
In We’re Not Broken, Garcia uses his own life as a springboard to discuss the social and policy gaps that exist in supporting those on the spectrum. From education to healthcare, he explores how autistic people wrestle with systems that were not built with them in mind. At the same time, he shares the experiences of all types of autistic people, from those with higher support needs, to autistic people of color, to those in the LGBTQ community. In doing so, Garcia gives his community a platform to articulate their own needs, rather than having others speak for them, which has been the standard for far too long
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The New Normal: Autistic musings on the threat of a broken society – David Gray-Hammond
BOOK DESCRIPTION
In this anthology, David Gray-Hammond has reworked and added to essays from his popular “Emergent Divergence” blog. The theme of the essays is that of neuronormativity in society, and the effect it is having on Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people. In this anthology, he challenges the idea of what normal is by calling out the status quo for the violence it inflicts on a marginalised neurodivergent community.
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Leaders Around Me: Autobiographies of Autistics who Type, Point, and Spell to Communicate – Edlyn Pena
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Leaders Around Me: Autobiographies of Autistics who Type, Point, and Spell to Communicate is a compilation of 45 autobiographies of extraordinary individuals who use keyboards, letter boards, and communication devices. The authors demonstrate that people who experience communication differences have the potential to achieve major accomplishments under accessible, inclusive, and supportive circumstances. Each autobiographical narrative ends with reflection questions to encourage reader engagement and reflection. All autistic individuals deserve autistic leaders around them for support and mentoring.
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Our Autistic Lives: Personal Accounts from Autistic Adults Around the World Aged 20 to 70+ – Alex Ratcliffe (Kieran is featured in this book – under the pseudonym Skywalker)
BOOK DESCRIPTION
This collection of narratives from autistic adults is structured around their decades of experience of life, covering 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60 and 70s+. These are varied and diverse, spanning different continents, genders, sexualities and ethnicities, yet the author highlights the common themes that unite them and skilfully draws out these threads.
Each chapter is based on accounts from one age group and includes accounts from people of that age, giving an insight into the history of autism and signifying how gaining a diagnosis (or not) has changed people’s lives over time. The book is about ageing with an autistic mind, and helping the reader find connections between neurotypical and neurodiverse people by acknowledging the challenges we all face in our past, present and futures.
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Untypical: How the world isn’t built for autistic people and what we should all do about it – Pete Wharmby
BOOK DESCRIPTION
t’s time to remake the world – the ground-breaking book on what steps we should all be taking for the autistic people in our lives.The modern world is built for neurotypicals: needless noise, bright flashing lights, small talk, phone calls, unspoken assumptions and unwritten rules – it can be a nightmarish dystopia for the autistic population. In Untypical, Pete Wharmby lays bare the experience of being ‘different’, explaining with wit and warmth just how exhausting it is to fit in to a world not designed for you.But this book is more than an explanation. After a late diagnosis and a lifetime of ‘masking’, Pete is the perfect interlocutor to explain how our two worlds can meet, and what we can do for the many autistic people in our schools, workplaces and lives. The result: a practical handbook for all of us to make the world a simpler, better place for autistic people to navigate, and a call to arms for anyone who believes in an inclusive society and wants to be part of the solution.
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Further Reading
I also have an article covering my Top 10 Academic books about Autism.
I also highly recommend the essay “…these thousands of little witnesses…” by Julia Lee Barclay Morton on her ‘Songs for the Unadapted Ones’ Substack. Many of the books which have guided and supported me over the years have done the same for Julia and Julia has woven such a beautiful story of her journey through these books that I highly recommend reading it. It is a lyrical, emotive and beautiful piece of writing.
I also have an article covering the Autism Affirming Books I’ve featured in/contributed to.
RECOMMENDED AUTISM POSITIVE BOOKS EBOOK/CATALOGUE: $7.50/£5.50/€6,50
My catalgue/ebook contains 180+ books and makes for a really nice way to browse them all. You can click the image or this link to find out more.
You receive the catalogue as a full colour, beautifully designed ebook which you can save to any device to read and/or print. The two Top 10 lists from this article are also contained inside the catalogue.
The catalogue has images for each book, a full description and useful categories so you can see what each book is about.
There are also useful links for each book directly to Amazon UK and my Bookshop store so you can easily purchase a book you want. You also receive an ‘at a glance’ spreadsheet which lists all of the books in a much simpler format.
I aim to keep the catalogue fully up-to-date (so far it has had 10 updates) and once you purchase you get all future versions FOR FREE.
How do I choose the books for my recommended autism books list?
I will only add books to the lists (that’s the main list of Autism Positive Books and the Top 10 Lists) once I’ve had read them and/or used them for reasearch purposes.
I do gets lots of requests from authors to add their books to this list and often I’ve already bought their book but have yet to read it. A book won’t be added until I’ve read/used it. Please be kind if you’re an author and find yourself in this position; I’ve got limited time to read and this list has been literally years in the making!
Sometimes a book in on the list before it has been published and that is usually because I’ve received a pre-publication copy.
If you’ve found this article useful you can support my work by donating any amount from $3 (about the same as a coffee – mine’s a caramel latter please!).
I know not everyone wants, or needs, one of my training courses, but I often find people will read one of my free articles and want to say ‘thank you’. And this is a really easy way to do that. It also supports me to keep being able to create new, free content and keep my older, free content up-to-date. It also allow me to keep my website ad-freel My Autism FAQs page is a good place to start if you’re new to my work and want to explore more.
Thanks for you support – it means the absolute world. Kieran x
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I have a full range of autism affirming, on-demand training available on my website: Browse Online Autism Training
