Buch Präsentation
Author:
Mark Haddon was born 26 of September 1962 in Northhampton and educated at Uppingham School and Mertin College in Oxford, where he studied English. He lived in Boston, Massachusetts for a year with his wife until they moved back to England. Now he is a writer and illustrator of a numerous award – winning childrens’s book an television screen – plays.
As a young, Haddon worked with autistic individuals. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation.
Some other books he have written:
Gilbert’s Godstopper (1987)
Toni and the Tomato Soup (1988)
Ocean Star Express (2001)1
Summary
Christopher John Francis Boone lives in Swindon together with his father. He is 15 years 3 moths and 3 days old and he is autism. His teacher Siobhan gives him clear advances and helps him for example to understand human emotions. Christopher’s father runs up a business and in this job he repairs heating maintenance and boilers. He takes care about Christopher, cooks for him and looks after him and he really loves him.
To show Christopher his love he always spread his fingers in a fan and Christopher does the same because he doesn’t want to be touched. Christopher always had a better relationship to his father than to his mother. He was more sensible with Christopher and had more passion. Christopher’s mum died two years ago of a heart attack. This is what his father has told him when she was gone one day.
Mrs. Shears – the neighbour – helped them trough this difficult time. At the same time she got divorced. One day Christopher found her dog Wellington dead in her garden. The woman thought that he had killed her dog and called the police. They took him to prison. He told them that he did not kill the dog, so his father picked him up and took him home. Christopher decided to find the murderer of the dog.
Siobhan told him at school that he could write a book about finding the murderer of the dog and so he decided to write it.
At home he went back to Mrs. Shear’s house to tell her that he didn’t kill the dog and that he will find out who had killed him. He went into her shed to see if the fork was in there. She told him to go home and so he went off.
The next day he asked his neighbours if they had seen something but he did not find out anything. For him this was a very difficult challenge talking to people he does not know but he managed it. He always has a Swiss Army Knife with him so he felt safe. Christopher thought that Mr. Shears had killed Wellington – the man who was married with Mrs. Shears. When he came home father got a call from Mrs.
Shears. He told Christopher that he should promise to keep his nose out of other people’s business and he promised but his father did not give him exactly advices what he is not allowed to do and so he kept on searching for the murderer. He also was motivated because it was a Super Good Day and that mean, that he has seen 5 red cars in a row. 4 red cars in a row would mean a Good Day, 3 red cars a Quite Good Day and 4 yellow cars in a row would mean a Black Day because Christopher hates yellow and brown.
He went to the shop at the end of the street where he met Mrs. Alexander and they went for a little chat to the park. She told him that Mr. Shears and his mother had an affaire two years ago and that was the reason why Mr. and Mrs. Shears are divorced and why his father does not like Mr. Shears. He had to promise not to tell anybody about this fact.
He kept the secret and wrote it in the book, because a book is not “anybody”. One day he left the book on the kitchen table where his dad found it. He got very angry and they started a fight. His father hit Christopher the first time in his life and he said that he will throw away the book but he hid it in his room.
The next day his father felt sorry and he took him to the zoo.
Later Christopher was looking for the book and when he found it in his father’s room he also found a box with letters from his mother, which were addressed to him. So he found out that his mother was still alive and lives together with Mr. Shears in London. When his father found out that Christopher knows everything he told him the whole story and said that he had killed Wellington because he was angry of Mrs.
Shears. She did not come round anyway because she had to take care of the dog.
When Christopher heard that, he was afraid of his dad and when his father fell asleep he went outside with his rat Toby and hid behind the shed the whole night. He decided to leave and after he told that Mrs. Alexander he went home and took food, his father’s credit card and Toby with him and left to live in London with his mother. He went to the train station. There were so many people and so he sat down for 2 ½ hours and thought of maths.
Christopher bought a ticket and because he was afraid of the people he imagined that everything he was doing was a computer game. He had so many impressions and everything was in his brain but he managed it to get into the train to London. The policeman found him and wanted to take him to the police station where his father was waiting for him but then the train started and they sat down together.
The policeman wanted to leave the train with Christopher at the next station but Christopher hid in the shelf and the policeman couldn’t find him anymore. Suddenly he was gone. He hid in the shelf till the train arrived at the last station.
Then he went out and walked in the direction the train came from. He imagined a red line and followed it. At the information a lady told him that he is in London and she showed him where the tube was he had to take to get to his mother. A woman told him that a policeman is looking for him and he should wait here but he escaped. At the underground station he bought a ticket to Willesden Green.
He sat down, closed his eyes and did not open them for five hours. Then he was very hungry and thirty. Toby was gone and when there were just three people in the station he started looking for him. He saw him in the lower – down but he went off when Christopher came down. A man shouted and said that he should come up because it is too dangerous. In the last minute Christopher grabbed Toby and the man saved him when the train came.
Later he went on one train and he went out at the right station. He asked a man in a shop where the address his mother lived was. He had to buy a map in the shop and he followed it till he reached the street of his mother.
That father said that she had died, that he had killed Wellington and how he travelled the long way on his own. After Christopher had a bath a policeman arrived. He wanted to take Christopher back to his father but when he found out that Christopher wants to live with his mother he went off. A few hours later father came and wanted to get Christopher back. Mother, father and Mr.
Shears started arguing and so father went into Christopher’s room and tried to apologize but Christopher was scared and didn’t talk to him. While that happened Mr. Shears called the police and father had to go.
A few days later Mr. Shears wanted Christopher to go back to his father but mother allowed him to stay as long as he wants and so mum bought him new cloths.
A – level but his mother didn’t want to go and she cancelled his A – level test. After arguing with Mr. Shears mother went with Christopher back to Swindon. There they lived in their house and father went to a friend. Then Christopher was able to do his A – level exam. Mum found a job in a garden centre and together with Christopher she moved to a room in a big house. Father apologized and Christopher got a dog called Sandy.
In his A – levels he got an A. Christopher trust his father always more and made plans for the future: He wants to do an A – level further maths, an A – level in physics and then he wanted to go to university to another town to get a scientist. He trusted himself that he can do anything he wants because he found out who killed Wellington and he travelled to London on his own!
Autism is a dramatic developmental disorder of the brain. People who are autistic cannot process the information and the perception. Optical, acoustical and tactile stimuli cannot get filed in. For this people it is hard to do social interactions and communication. The strengths are the intelligence, memory, attention and perception
There are two different forms of Autism:
Kanner-Syndrom
Asperger- Syndrom
If children have autism it is a flaw of social interactions and it can happen that the children are cutting themselves off of their environment. Often there is a disturbance in the verbal development. The children cannot build social contacts and their fantasy is hard affected. Autism has less to do with intelligence but at the main part of people with autism you can see that their intelligence is not completely developed.
Avoiding eye contact and body contact are typical behaviours. Most of the time, this behaviours appear when the children are two or three years old. The brain of these children is often bigger as the brain of the others.
A possible cause for autism is based on a dysfunction of the brain.
Other causes can be obesity, brain defects or genetic disorders.
Symptoms:
There are different symptoms which have individual values. They can start from behaviour problems and go till heavy mental annoyances.
Adverse effect of the social behaviour:
troubles to talk to other people they do not know
interpreting things, which are not logical (e.g. What would she say if she were here?)
Facts are:
Autism is not a disease. It is what you are, your character.
There are more autistic boys than girls.
Autism has nothing to do with psych.
More than one percent of the people are autistics.
You cannot heal autism.
Autistic people have the same looks than normal people.
They have outstanding skills.
Autism
Now we will tell you something about Christopher’s life as an autistic boy. Also we will tell you some information about his behaviour problems, how his brain works and about his problems with human emotions.
Christopher is a very intelligent boy with special abilities. He knows all prim numbers up to 7.057 and all countries of the world and their capitals. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched and he detests the colours yellow and brown. Every day interactions and admonishments have little meaning for him. He lives on patterns, rules and a diagram kept in his pocket.
Christopher doesn’t like new places because he can remember everything that he sees so it is very exhausting for him to handle with all this impressions and information. For example in scenery he knows how many cows there are and what colour they have with only one look. His brain is working like a map. When he closes his eyes he can see exactly maps or pictures from a place.
Christopher is a math genius and he really loves to solve math problems. Christopher always tells the truth and never tells a lie, only white lies. A white lie is where you tell the truth but you do not tell all of the truth.
Christopher always likes to know which time it is.
Not talking to people for a long time (once he didn’t talk to anyone for 5 weeks)
Screaming when he is angry or confused
Not liking being in really small places with other people
Smashing things when he is angry or confused
Groaning (stöhnen, ächzen)
Refusing to use his toothbrush if anyone else has touched it
Not eating food if different sorts of food are touching each other
Not noticing that people are angry with him
Not smiling
Saying things that other people think are rude
Doing stupid things
Hitting other people
Hating France
Getting cross when someone has moved the furniture (Möbel)
Personal opinion
We really liked the book because it was easy to understand the language and it was very exiting to read. The main theme “autism” is very interesting and in the book you get a good insight the theme because everything seems so real when the boy tells the story. The structure of the book is not like the structure of other books because the chapter numbers are prime numbers.
We did not expect that the whole action will change. The book is very advisable to read because there is no scene where you get bored.
DE
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