The One and Only Sam: A Story Explaining Idioms for Children with Asperger Syndrome and Other Communication Difficulties
Article Type: Resource reviews From: Social Care and Neurodisability, Volume 3, Issue 2
Aileen Stalker with illustrations by Bob Spencer,Jessica Kingsley Publishers,London,2010,£12.9964,ISBN: 978 1 84905 040 1
This book focuses on the difficulty children may have with interpreting idioms in everyday communication. It is intended as an aid and tool to be used together with children to help explore and practise the use of idioms.
The author has identified that those children with communication and social learning difficulties will have a harder time interpreting idioms especially where the interpretation of emotion is required and she has constructed a delightful story about Sam, his family and how they help him make sense of his first experiences of school and the difficulties with everyday communication faced by children. A simple four-stage procedure for helping a child interpret an idiom is suggested and then illustrated and practiced throughout the book.
Idioms
- 1.
Listen to the words.
- 2.
Make a picture in your mind.
- 3.
Think if this picture makes sense.
- 4.
Look for the things that are the same between your picture and what is happening.
The book is beautifully and humorously illustrated with numerous drawings of the literal meaning of idioms which are bound to amuse and engage children. Throughout the story, after the initial puzzlement over an idiom, there is a clearly identifiable explanation using different colour ink and a different type face for those words conveying emotion and feeling. This simple but focused and repetitive structure enhances clarity and is especially useful for those children with a learning disability and difficulty interpreting emotions.
There were several aspects to the book giving rise to curiosity. The book is set out in a hardback, A4 in size but presented in landscape format. The size shape and illustrations would attract early independent readers; however, the intent of the book is for adult and child not only to read the book together but to use the book together. How easy would this be to do in practice? And would groups of children be able to access it together with an adult? The illustrations although beautifully achieved and often humours depict a school and a classroom which would be very alien to European children. Children are shown sitting at neatly rowed lines of individual desks facing a teacher at the front of a class next to a chalkboard. Would this be accessible to children in the UK? How would the suggested method of interpreting an idiom work in practice?
To answer these questions it was decided to ask a group of children to“review” the book by using it and providing feedback about their experience. A group of five eight-year-old children who attend an ordinary inner city primary school where chosen to review the book during an hour-long session. The children were not specially selected, were mixed ability and contained among their number those with communication difficulties and special educational needs.
The children were read the book and invited to participate in the suggested method of constructing or working out the appropriate interpretation of an idiom. The children were then invited to comment on the book and their experience of it. The children were all familiar with what an idiom was. They saw them more as a peculiarity of adult communication, a puzzle to be learnt rather than something they would use themselves to illustrate or aid communication. The book was greatly enjoyed and seen as fun, not only the story of Sam’s original misinterpretations of idioms and later learning there meaning but also the children’s own attempts at constructing meaning and illustrating them as suggested in the book was seen to be engaging and enjoyable. The children participating had several differing levels of attainment and differing educational needs, however, the book was accessible to them all and the exercise of imagining and drawing a particular idiom was self-levelling and allowed all to participate in subsequent discussion. The illustrations were particularly liked and the children had no difficulty whatsoever at accessing them. They clearly understood the classroom context being illustrated even though the pictorial clues were well outside their experience.
The children interpreting meaning of idioms using the method described in the book proved interesting. Imagining and or drawing the events depicted by an idiom, then comparing this to the actual events and to speculate about the possible feelings and emotions proved a useful aid to discussion but did not lead directly to accurate or the more usual interpretations of idioms. It transpired that the children could accurately understand the meanings of idioms they had encountered before but unfamiliar ones proved difficult to interpret and produced a range of interesting but not illogical interpretations. This can be shown by the illustrations below, both drawn by the same girl. The first shows us quite a graphic illustration of the idiom “The cat’s got your tongue” and an accurate interpretation. The second logical but inaccurate interpretation of the idiom “She’s got cold feet”. For this group of children at least the meanings of idioms were learnt after explanation and subsequent use or recognition and not by constructing meaning from guided comparison.
This is not to suggest that the method described in the book is without value. The conversation surrounding meaning and interpretation together with the invitation to the child to carefully consider feelings and emotion are immeasurably valuable and will serve as a good template or model for those wishing to enhance the understanding and communication skills of children with communication difficulties. For the group of children worked with this book was seen not so much as a story but in their words, “A cool English lesson”The book is quite “ reader intensive” and if used with a group of children would need some careful planning or rehearsal to be effective. Similarly the book achieves its aim of providing a story so well that there is a tension between wanting to participate in the story, to find out about Sam’s next encounter and interpretation and the careful methodical and necessarily slow process of allowing those being read to time to participate in the suggested methods of constructing an interpretation of the idioms. This reason planning and rehearsal are recommended as is reading the book in incremental stages.
Overall this was a carefully constructed well thought out book with beautiful illustrations which children will find fun and enjoyable. It is a valuable resource.
Niall DalySenior Social Worker and Associate Lecturer, London
