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| English Book Cover |
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| Japanese Book Cover |
A few weeks ago, I reviewed The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida. The book, published in 2007 and translated to English in 2013, became a huge hit with parents of children on the autism spectrum, as well as many more of those who themselves were on the said spectrum. Higashida was 13 when he wrote The Reason I Jump, which then caused a lot of skepticism as to how such deep thoughts and words could come from a non-verbal autistic boy.
In 2012, almost as if it was an answer to the skeptics, Higashida pens 自閉症の僕の七転び八起き (Jiheishō no boku no nanakorobiyaoki), using the same alphabet grid writing tool he used for his previous book. David Mitchell and Keiko Yoshida, the husband-and-wife translating team from Higshida's previous book, return to translate this piece, and in July 2017 Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8: A Young Man's Voice from the Silence of Autism was published.
I had heard about this book around the same time I was reading The Reason I Jump, so when a recent trip to our local bookstore had me seeing Higashida's most recent title on the shelf, I could not resist snatching this up.
So at 20 years of age, what more did Higashida want to tell us about his world?
