I love having a “book dealer” or aka the publishers who like to send me little gifts of books that I get to read then tell people about. One of these recent gifts was The Boy Who Loves to Lick the Wind by Finoa Carswell and illustrated by Yu Rong. And while I expected more actual wind licking (or what would pass as wind licking), what we do get is a fun and interesting story that includes a mixture of modern and classical tones to make a book about compassion.
The idea is that our main character is autistic and the narrator (the neighbor child) finds a way to befriend him. We see how the family of the boy adapts to his needs, and how the two children can play together. Then our narrator takes this new knowledge of understanding, friendship, and looking at the world to his school friends.
This is not a new idea, but the way that Carswell has presented it has a more fantastical way of describing things and the art reflects that by being both a bit surreal and realistic at the same time. Things are bright, but not overwhelming and there is empty space that is actually filled with both something and nothing. This balances things and allows you to focus on the people. The special needs child is well represented, there is none of the “other” that we could have seen. The narrator could have been fearful, or someone was cruel to the autistic child, but the protagonist just has the natural curiosity we all might have as a child when seeing something that is not in our normal wheelhouse of expectations.
There are some extras at the end, however, I am not familiar with the groups mentioned, but there are links to learning more about autism as well as a few other things.
