The Power of QBooks: One boy's journey to overcome social deficits
Inside the book
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Educational memoir
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A parent's candid, emotional account
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An enchanting narrative
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A call to action
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A success story
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Problem-solution approach
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QBooks as integral part of intervention
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Effective methodology
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144 examples
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Use ready-made QBooks or make your own
Summary
“The Power of QBooks” is an captivating account of one mother’s quest to transform the dark news of her son’s autism diagnosis into the bright promise of his unbounded future.
Marina Dedkova, mathematician-turned-artist, chronicles her journey as she resolutely applies her inventiveness and originality to the creation of visual tools she calls QBooks, with definitive success.
She invokes the magic of classical European fairy tales she grew up with. Drawing especially on H.C Andersen’s “Ugly Duckling” and “Wild Swans”, she constructs the narrative of the beauty revealing itself as the unyielding determination prevails. She casts herself as a protagonist who commits to the rescue of her beloved from the wicked spell. But to succeed, they should work together, molding the future. Like in these classical tales, they meet amazing characters along the way, who help them in their task - teachers, clinicians, practitioners.
In "Wild Swans", the heroine works tirelessly knitting shirts out of nettles to rescue her twelve brothers, who were turned into swans by a mean-spirited witch, willing to give up her own happiness and even life for her task. At the end, her work is unfinished as the youngest brother’s arm remains forever the swan’s wing, the beautiful souvenir of the spell. In "Ugly Duckling", the childhood awkwardness of an "atypical" chick transforms into breathtaking beauty.
From day one, Dedkova sees her son Max’s autism as a challenge they, together, should meet head on. She details her path: receiving the diagnosis, assembling the intervention team, often acting as a therapist herself, and along the way, writing hundreds of QBooks.
They are short books, usually just six pages long, with an image and a short caption on each page. The images are photographs and sometimes hand-drawn pictures. The text, often humorous, contrasts appropriate and inappropriate behavior or relates the learning process. The books form a five-year coming-of-age fabula with an endearing character at its center — a little boy who masters new skills, makes mistakes, learns from them, grows and blossoms, nevertheless retaining some peculiarities of his condition — integral parts of his humanity.