It was the first day of school for my daughter. She came home excitedly announced that she had the same teacher as in third grade, and 13 out of 22 students were in third grade last year.  “And who are the other students,” I asked.

She tried to remember their names and whose classes they were from.

“But mommy,” she said. “I don’t think I am in a smart class because there are kids with aides in my class.”

She clarified that her class had three kids with aides. They were autistic students who needed more help in keeping calm and paying attention in the class.

One student occasionally yelled out in the class.

They sat in the back of the classroom with their aides, trying to be invisible to the class.

“What makes you think autistic students are not smart?”

She shrugged her shoulder.

I thought this is a good opportunity for her to learn more about Autism and autistic friends.

We picked up the book Rain Reign.

We read it together.

At first, it was not holding her interest. But as we read deeper into the book, and as she spent more days with her autistic classmates, she could relate to the story, and she showed more interest in it. She wanted to finish the book the next day, but we decided to read it slowly and learn more about events in the book.

Rain Reign could not have come at a perfect time.

We learned more about high functioning autism, which was the diagnosis of Rose, the main character in the story.

When we read the part where Rose got upset and started crying: when she observed the cars did not follow the rules (p. 35), and when Josh did not follow the grammar rule ( 41-42). My daughter thought back of her classmates. She understood why Adam shouted out in the class, why Jean cried for ‘nothing’ which was for something, and why Kaily just bounced back and forth.

We looked up Hurricane Susan, which was mentioned in the story, and found it happened in 1958 and 1969, which probably was not the one in the story. Only we reached the end, we found out it was indeed hurricane Irene that inspired the story. We read more about Hurricane Irene and its destruction.

We reviewed prime and composite numbers (These are common core standards!)

We had our lessons on homophones, homographs, antonyms, and synonyms. We did not make the list like Rose, but we ended up with the poster of these colloquialisms.

The book did nothing for me if I was to read it by myself. But reading it with my daughter and turning it into teachable moments made it absolutely meaningful.

The most meaningful thing my daughter learned that we could be identified as autistic and still be smart. “Mommy,” she said, “Adam is very smart with the computer.” She was able to look past the labeling and recognize their true smarts. We all have our talents.