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The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism Hardcover – August 27, 2013
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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
NPR • The Wall Street Journal • Bloomberg Business • Bookish
FINALIST FOR THE BOOKS FOR A BETTER LIFE FIRST BOOK AWARD • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
You’ve never read a book like The Reason I Jump. Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming thirteen-year-old boy with autism, it is a one-of-a-kind memoir that demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Parents and family members who never thought they could get inside the head of their autistic loved one at last have a way to break through to the curious, subtle, and complex life within.
Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences, and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. Questions such as: “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly?” “Why do you line up your toy cars and blocks?” “Why don’t you make eye contact when you’re talking?” and “What’s the reason you jump?” (Naoki’s answer: “When I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky.”) With disarming honesty and a generous heart, Naoki shares his unique point of view on not only autism but life itself. His insights—into the mystery of words, the wonders of laughter, and the elusiveness of memory—are so startling, so strange, and so powerful that you will never look at the world the same way again.
In his introduction, bestselling novelist David Mitchell writes that Naoki’s words allowed him to feel, for the first time, as if his own autistic child was explaining what was happening in his mind. “It is no exaggeration to say that The Reason I Jump allowed me to round a corner in our relationship.” This translation was a labor of love by David and his wife, KA Yoshida, so they’d be able to share that feeling with friends, the wider autism community, and beyond. Naoki’s book, in its beauty, truthfulness, and simplicity, is a gift to be shared.
Praise for The Reason I Jump
“This is an intimate book, one that brings readers right into an autistic mind.”—Chicago Tribune (Editor’s Choice)
“Amazing times a million.”—Whoopi Goldberg, People
“The Reason I Jump is a Rosetta stone. . . . This book takes about ninety minutes to read, and it will stretch your vision of what it is to be human.”—Andrew Solomon, The Times (U.K.)
“Extraordinary, moving, and jeweled with epiphanies.”—The Boston Globe
“Small but profound . . . [Higashida’s] startling, moving insights offer a rare look inside the autistic mind.”—Parade
- Print length176 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication dateAugust 27, 2013
- Dimensions5 x 0.71 x 7.52 inches
- ISBN-100812994868
- ISBN-13978-0812994865
- Lexile measure1000L
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Author One-on-One: David Mitchell and Andrew Solomon
David Mitchell is the international bestselling author of Cloud Atlas and four other novels.
Andrew Solomon is the author of several books including Far From the Tree and The Noonday Demon.
Andrew Solomon: Why do you think that such narratives from inside autism are so rare--and what do you think allowed Naoki Higashida to find a voice?
David Mitchell: Autism comes in a bewildering and shifting array of shapes, severities, colors and sizes, as you of all writers know, Dr. Solomon, but the common denominator is a difficulty in communication. Naturally, this will impair the ability of a person with autism to compose narratives, for the same reason that deaf composers are thin on the ground, or blind portraitists. While not belittling the Herculean work Naoki and his tutors and parents did when he was learning to type, I also think he got a lucky genetic/neural break: the manifestation of Naoki's autism just happens to be of a type that (a) permitted a cogent communicator to develop behind his initial speechlessness, and (b) then did not entomb this communicator by preventing him from writing. This combination appears to be rare.
AS: What, in your view, is the relationship between language and intelligence? How do autistic people who have no expressive language best manifest their intelligence?
DM: It would be unwise to describe a relationship between two abstract nouns without having a decent intellectual grip on what those nouns are. Language, sure, the means by which we communicate: but intelligence is to definition what Teflon is to warm cooking oil. I feel most at home in the school that talks about 'intelligences' rather than intelligence in the singular, whereby intelligence is a fuzzy cluster of aptitudes: numerical, emotional, logical, abstract, artistic, 'common sense' – and linguistic. In this model, language is one subset of intelligence – and, Homo sapiens being the communicative, cooperative bunch that we are, rather a crucial one, for without linguistic intelligence it's hard to express (or even verify the existence of) the other types. I guess that people with autism who have no expressive language manifest their intelligence the same way you would if duct tape were put over your mouth and a 'Men in Black'-style memory zapper removed your ability to write: by identifying problems and solving them. I want a chocky bicky, but the cookie jar's too high: I'll get the stool and stand on it. Or, Dad's telling me I have to have my socks on before I can play on his iPhone, but I'd rather be barefoot: I'll pull the tops of my socks over my toes, so he can't say they aren't on, then I'll get the iPhone. Or, This game needs me to add 7+4: I'll input 12, no, that's no good, try 11, yep...
AS: Naoki Higashida comes off as very charming, but describes being very difficult for his parents. Do you think that the slightly self-mocking humor he shows will give him an easier life than he'd have had without the charm?
DM: Definitely. Humor is a delightful sensation, and an antidote to many ills. I feel that it is linked to wisdom, but I'm neither wise nor funny enough to have ever worked out quite how they intertwine.
AS: As you translated this book from the Japanese, did you feel you could represent his voice much as it was in his native language? Did you find that there are Japanese ways of thinking that required as much translation from you and your wife as autistic ways required of the author?
DM: Our goal was to write the book as Naoki would have done if he was a 13 year-old British kid with autism, rather than a 13 year-old Japanese kid with autism. Once we had identified that goal, many of the 1001 choices you make while translating became clear. Phrasal and lexical repetition is less of a vice in Japanese –- it's almost a virtue –- so varying Naoki's phrasing, while keeping the meaning, was a ball we had to keep our eyes on. Linguistic directness can come over as vulgar in Japanese, but this is more of a problem when Japanese is the Into language than when it is the Out Of language. The only other regular head-bender is the rendering of onomatopoeia, for which Japanese has a synaesthetic genius – not just animal sounds, but qualities of light, or texture, or motion. Those puzzles were fun, though
AS: Higashida has written dream-like stories that punctuate the narrative. Can you say what functional or narrative purpose they serve in the book?
DM: Their inclusion was, I guess, an idea of the book's original Japanese editor, for whom I can't speak. But for me they provide little coffee breaks from the Q&A, as well as showing that Naoki can write creatively and in slightly different styles. The story at the end is an attempt to show us neurotypicals what it would feel like if we couldn't communicate. The story is, in a way, The Reason I Jump but re-framed and re-hung in fictional form. They also prove that Naoki is capable of metaphor and analogy.
AS: The book came out in its original form in Japan some years ago. Do you know what has happened to the author since the book was published?
DM: Naoki has had a number of other books about autism published in Japan, both prior to and after Jump. He's now about 20, and he's doing okay. He receives invitations to talk about autism at various universities and institutions throughout Japan. This involves him reading 2a presentation aloud, and taking questions from the audience, which he answers by typing. This isn't easy for him, but he usually manages okay. In terms of public knowledge about autism, Europe is a decade behind the States, and Japan's about a decade behind us, and Naoki would view his role as that of an autism advocate, to close that gap. (I happen to know that in a city the size of Hiroshima, of well over a million people, there isn't a single doctor qualified to give a diagnosis of autism.)
Review
“Please don’t assume that The Reason I Jump is just another book for the crowded autism shelf. . . . This is an intimate book, one that brings readers right into an autistic mind—what it’s like without boundaries of time, why cues and prompts are necessary, and why it’s so impossible to hold someone else’s hand. Of course, there’s a wide range of behavior here; that’s why ‘on the spectrum’ has become such a popular phrase. But by listening to this voice, we can understand its echoes.”—Chicago Tribune (Editor’s Choice)
“Amazing times a million.”—Whoopi Goldberg, People
“The Reason I Jump is a Rosetta stone. . . . I had to keep reminding myself that the author was a thirteen-year-old boy when he wrote this . . . because the freshness of voice coexists with so much wisdom. This book takes about ninety minutes to read, and it will stretch your vision of what it is to be human.”—Andrew Solomon, The Times (U.K.)
“Extraordinary, moving, and jeweled with epiphanies.”—The Boston Globe
“Small but profound . . . [Naoki Higashida’s] startling, moving insights offer a rare look inside the autistic mind.”—Parade
“Surely one of the most remarkable books yet to be featured in these pages . . . With about one in 88 children identified with an autism spectrum disorder, and family, friends, and educators hungry for information, this inspiring book’s continued success seems inevitable.”—Publishers Weekly
“We have our received ideas, we believe they correspond roughly to the way things are, then a book comes along that simply blows all this so-called knowledge out of the water. This is one of them. . . . An entry into another world.”—Daily Mail (U.K.)
“Every page dismantles another preconception about autism. . . . Once you understand how Higashida managed to write this book, you lose your heart to him.”—New Statesman (U.K.)
“Astonishing. The Reason I Jump builds one of the strongest bridges yet constructed between the world of autism and the neurotypical world. . . . There are many more questions I’d like to ask Naoki, but the first words I’d say to him are ‘thank you.’”—The Sunday Times (U.K.)
“This is a guide to what it feels like to be autistic. . . . In Mitchell and Yoshida’s translation, [Higashida] comes across as a thoughtful writer with a lucid simplicity that is both childlike and lyrical. . . . Higashida is living proof of something we should all remember: in every autistic child, however cut off and distant they may outwardly seem, there resides a warm, beating heart.”—Financial Times (U.K.)
“Higashida’s child’s-eye view of autism is as much a winsome work of the imagination as it is a user’s manual for parents, carers and teachers. . . . This book gives us autism from the inside, as we have never seen it. . . . [Higashida] offers readers eloquent access into an almost entirely unknown world.”—The Independent (U.K.)
“The Reason I Jump is a wise, beautiful, intimate and courageous explanation of autism as it is lived every day by one remarkable boy. Naoki Higashida takes us ‘behind the mirror’—his testimony should be read by parents, teachers, siblings, friends, and anybody who knows and loves an autistic person. I only wish I’d had this book to defend myself when I was Naoki’s age.”—Tim Page, author of Parallel Play and professor of journalism and music at the University of Southern California
“[Higashida] illuminates his autism from within. . . . Anyone struggling to understand autism will be grateful for the book and translation.”—Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
David Mitchell is the author of seven novels, including Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks, and, most recently, Slade House. KA Yoshida was born in Yamaguchi, Japan, and specialized in English poetry at Notre Dame Seishin University. KA Yoshida and David Mitchell live in Ireland with their two children.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
David Mitchell
The thirteen-year-old author of this book invites you, his reader, to imagine a daily life in which your faculty of speech is taken away. Explaining that you’re hungry, or tired, or in pain, is now as beyond your powers as a chat with a friend. I’d like to push the thought-experiment a little further. Now imagine that after you lose your ability to communicate, the editor-in-residence who orders your thoughts walks out without notice. The chances are that you never knew this mind-editor existed, but now that he or she has gone, you realize too late how the editor allowed your mind to function for all these years. A dam-burst of ideas, memories, impulses and thoughts is cascading over you, unstoppably. Your editor controlled this flow, diverting the vast majority away, and recommending just a tiny number for your conscious consideration. But now you’re on your own.
Now your mind is a room where twenty radios, all tuned to different stations, are blaring out voices and music. The radios have no off-switches or volume controls, the room you’re in has no door or window, and relief will come only when you’re too exhausted to stay awake. To make matters worse, another hitherto unrecognized editor has just quit without notice—your editor of the senses. Suddenly sensory input from your environment is flooding in too, unfiltered in quality and overwhelming in quantity. Colors and patterns swim and clamor for your attention. The fabric softener in your sweater smells as strong as air freshener fired up your nostrils. Your comfy jeans are now as scratchy as steel wool. Your vestibular and proprioceptive senses are also out of kilter, so the floor keeps tilting like a ferry in heavy seas, and you’re no longer sure where your hands and feet are in relation to the rest of you. You can feel the plates of your skull, plus your facial muscles and your jaw; your head feels trapped inside a motorcycle helmet three sizes too small which may or may not explain why the air conditioner is as deafening as an electric drill, but your father—who’s right here in front of you—sounds as if he’s speaking to you from a cellphone, on a train going through lots of short tunnels, in fluent Cantonese. You are no longer able to comprehend your mother tongue, or any tongue: from now on, all languages will be foreign languages. Even your sense of time has gone, rendering you unable to distinguish between a minute and an hour, as if you’ve been entombed in an Emily Dickinson poem about eternity, or locked into a time-bending SF film. Poems and films, however, come to an end, whereas this is your new ongoing reality. Autism is a lifelong condition.
Thanks for sticking to the end, though the real end, for most of us, would involve sedation and being forcibly hospitalized, and what happens next it’s better not to speculate. Yet for those people born onto the autistic spectrum, this unedited, unfiltered and scary-as-all-hell reality is home. The functions that genetics bestows on the rest of us—the “editors”—as a birthright, people with autism must spend their lives learning how to simulate. It is an intellectual and emotional task of Herculean, Sisyphean and Titanic proportions, and if the autistic people who undertake it aren’t heroes, then I don’t know what heroism is, never mind that the heroes have no choice. Sentience itself is not so much a fact to be taken for granted, but a brickby-brick, self-built construct requiring constant maintenance. As if this wasn’t a tall enough order, people with autism must survive in an outside world where “special needs” is playground slang for “retarded,” where melt-downs and panic attacks are viewed as tantrums, where disability allowance claimants are assumed by many to be welfare scroungers, and where British foreign policy can be described as “autistic” by a French minister. (M. Lellouche
apologized later, explaining that he never dreamed that the adjective could have caused offense. I don’t doubt it.)
Autism is no cakewalk for the child’s parents or carers either, and raising an autistic son or daughter is no job for the fainthearted—in fact, faintheartedness is doomed by the fi rst niggling doubt that there’s Something Not Quite Right about your sixteen-month-old. On Diagnosis Day, a child psychologist hands down the verdict with a worn-smooth truism about your son still being the same little guy that he was before this life-redefining news was confirmed. Then you run the gauntlet of other people’s reactions: “It’s just so sad”; “What, so he’s going to be like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man?”; “I hope you’re not going to take this so-called ‘diagnosis’ lying down!”; and my favorite, “Yes, well, I told my pediatrician where to go stick his MMR jabs.” Your first contacts with most support agencies will put the last nails in the coffin of faintheartedness, and graft onto you a layer of scar tissue and cynicism as thick as rhino hide. There are gifted and resourceful people working in autism support, but with depressing regularity government policy appears to be about Band-Aids and fig leaves, and not about realizing the potential of children with special needs and helping them become long-term net contributors to society. The scant silver lining is that medical theory is no longer blaming your wife for causing the autism by being a “Refrigerator Mother” as it did not so long ago (Refrigerator Fathers were unavailable for comment) and that you don’t live in a society where people with autism are believed to be witches or devils and get treated accordingly.
Where to turn to next? Books. (You’ll have started already, because the first reaction of friends and family desperate to help is to send clippings, Web links and literature, however tangential to your own situation.) Special Needs publishing is a jungle. Many How to Help Your Autistic Child manuals have a doctrinaire spin, with generous helpings of © and ™. They may contain usable ideas, but reading them can feel depressingly like being asked to join a political party or a church. The more academic texts are denser, more cross-referenced and rich in pedagogy and abbreviations. Of course it’s good that academics are researching the field, but often the gap between the theory and what’s unraveling on your kitchen floor is too wide to bridge.
Another category is the more confessional memoir, usually written by a parent, describing the impact of autism on the family and sometimes the positive effect of an unorthodox treatment. These memoirs are media-friendly and raise the profile of autism in the marketplace of worthy causes, but I have found their practical use to be limited, and in fairness they usually aren’t written to be useful. Every autistic person exhibits his or her own variation of the condition—autism is more like retina patterns than measles—and the more unorthodox the treatment for one child, the less likely it is to help another (mine, for example).
A fourth category of autism book is the “autism autobiography” written by insiders on the autistic spectrum, the most famous example being Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin. For sure, these books are often illuminating, but almost by definition they tend to be written by adults who have already worked things out, and they couldn’t help me where I needed help most: to understand why my three-year-old was banging his head against the floor; or flapping his fingers in front of his eyes at high speed; or suffering from skin so sensitive that he couldn’t sit or lie down; or howling with grief for forty-five minutes when the Pingu DVD was too scratched for the DVD player to read it. My reading provided theories, angles, anecdotes and guesses about these challenges, but without reasons all I could do was look on, helplessly.
One day my wife received a remarkable book she had ordered from Japan called The Reason I Jump. Its author, Naoki Higashida, was born in 1992 and was still in junior high school when the book was published. Naoki’s autism is severe enough to make spoken communication pretty much impossible, even now. But thanks to an ambitious teacher and his own persistence, he learned to spell out words directly onto an alphabet grid. A Japanese alphabet grid is a table of the basic forty Japanese hiragana letters, and its English counterpart is a copy of the qwerty keyboard, drawn onto a card and laminated. Naoki communicates by pointing to the letters on these grids to spell out whole words, which a helper at his side then transcribes. These words build up into sentences, paragraphs and entire books. “Extras” around the side of the grids include numbers, punctuation, and the words finished, yes and no. (Although Naoki can also write and blog directly onto a computer via its keyboard, he finds the lower-tech alphabet grid a “steadier handrail” as it offers fewer distractions and helps him to focus.) Even in primary school this method enabled him to communicate with others, and compose poems and story books, but it was his explanations about why children with autism do what they do that were, literally, the answers that we had been waiting for. Composed by a writer still with one foot in childhood, and whose autism was at least as challenging and life-altering as our son’s, The Reason I Jump was a revelatory godsend. Reading it felt as if, for the first time, our own son was talking to us about what was happening inside his head, through Naoki’s words.
The book goes much further than providing information, however: it offers up proof that locked inside the helpless-seeming autistic body is a mind as curious, subtle and complex as yours, as mine, as anyone’s. During the 24/7 grind of being a carer, it’s all too easy to forget the fact that the person you’re doing so much for is, and is obliged to be, more resourceful than you in many respects. As the months turn into years “forgetting” can become “disbelieving,” and this lack of faith makes both the carer and the cared-for vulnerable to negativities. Naoki Higashida’s gift is to restore faith: by demonstrating intellectual acuity and spiritual curiosity; by analysis of his environment and his condition; and by a puckish sense of humor and a drive to write fiction. We’re not talking signs or hints of these mental propensities: they’re already here, in the book which (I hope) you’re about to read. If that weren’t enough, The Reason I Jump unwittingly discredits the doomiest item of received wisdom about autism—that people with autism are antisocial loners who lack empathy with others. Naoki Higashida reiterates repeatedly that no, he values the company of other people very much. But because communication is so fraught with problems, a person with autism tends to end up alone in a corner, where people then see him or her and think, Aha, classic sign of autism, that. Similarly, if people with autism are oblivious to other people’s feelings, how could Naoki testify that the most unendurable aspect of autism is the knowledge that he makes other people stressed out and depressed? How could he write a story (entitled “I’m Right Here” and included at the end of the book) boasting characters who display a range of emotions and a plot designed to tweak the tear glands? Like all storytelling mammals, Naoki is anticipating his audience’s emotions and manipulating them. That is empathy. The conclusion is that both emotional poverty and an aversion to company are not symptoms of autism but consequences of autism, its harsh lockdown on self-expression and society’s near-pristine ignorance about what’s happening inside autistic heads.
For me, all the above is transformative, life-enhancing knowledge. When you know that your kid wants to speak with you, when you know that he’s taking in his surroundings every bit as attentively as your nonautistic daughter, whatever the evidence to the contrary, then you can be ten times more patient, willing, understanding and communicative; and ten times better able to help his development. It is no exaggeration to say that The Reason I Jump allowed me to round a corner in our relationship with our son. Naoki Higashida’s writing administered the kick I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself, and start thinking how much tougher life was for my son, and what I could do to make it less tough. Virtuous spirals are as wonderful in special-needs parenting as anywhere else: your expectations for your child are raised; your stamina to get through the rocky patches is strengthened; and your child senses this, and responds. My wife began to work on an informal translation of Naoki’s book into English so that our son’s other carers and tutors could read it, as well as a few friends who also have sons and daughters with autism in our corner of Ireland. But after discovering through Web groups that other expat Japanese mothers of children with autism were frustrated by the lack of a translation into English, we began to wonder if there might not be a much wider audience for Naoki Higashida. This English translation of The Reason I Jump is the result.
The author is not a guru, and if the answers to a few of the questions may seem a little sparse, remember he was only thirteen when he wrote them. Even when he can’t provide a short, straight answer—such as to the question “Why do you like lining up your toys so obsessively?”—what he has to say is still worthwhile. Naoki Higashida has continued to write, keeps a nearly daily blog, has become well known in autism advocacy circles and has been featured regularly in the Japanese Big Issue. He says that he aspires to be a writer, but it’s obvious to me that he already is one—an honest, modest, thoughtful writer, who has won over enormous odds and transported first-hand knowledge from the severely autistic mind into the wider world; a process as taxing for him as, say, the act of carrying water in cupped palms across a bustling Times Square or Piccadilly Circus would be to you or me. The three characters used for the word “autism” in Japanese signify “self,” “shut” and “illness.” My imagination converts these characters into a prisoner locked up and forgotten inside a solitary confinement cell waiting for someone, anyone, to realize he or she is in there. The Reason I Jump knocks out a brick in the
wall.
Product details
- Publisher : Random House
- Publication date : August 27, 2013
- Edition : First Edition
- Language : English
- Print length : 176 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0812994868
- ISBN-13 : 978-0812994865
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5 x 0.71 x 7.52 inches
- Lexile measure : 1000L
- Best Sellers Rank: #57,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Children's Autism Spectrum
- #25 in Parenting Books on Children with Disabilities
- #388 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

Born in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Worcestershire. After graduating from Kent University, he taught English in Japan, where he wrote his first novel, GHOSTWRITTEN. Published in 1999, it was awarded the Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, NUMBER9DREAM, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and in 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. His third novel, CLOUD ATLAS, was shortlisted for six awards including the Man Booker Prize, and adapted for film in 2012. It was followed by BLACK SWAN GREEN, shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, which was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller, and THE BONE CLOCKS which won the World Fantasy Best Novel Award. All three were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. David Mitchell’s seventh novel is SLADE HOUSE (Sceptre, 2015).
In 2013, THE REASON I JUMP: ONE BOY'S VOICE FROM THE SILENCE OF AUTISM by Naoki Higashida was published by Sceptre in a translation from the Japanese by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida and became a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. Its successor, FALL DOWN SEVEN TIMES, GET UP EIGHT: A YOUNG MAN’S VOICE FROM THE SILENCE OF AUTISM, was published in 2017, and was also a Sunday Times bestseller.

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Customers find the book insightful, helping them understand autism better, and appreciate its beautiful prose that reads like a newspaper article. Moreover, the book touches the heart and expands readers' empathy and patience, making them more compassionate towards those with disabilities. However, customers disagree on the book's readability, with some finding it easy to follow while others find it repetitive. Additionally, the book's length receives mixed reactions, with some appreciating its short chapters while others consider it too short.
AI Generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book insightful and educational, providing a fascinating perspective that helps them understand autism better.
"...book is truly a mirror into his soul and his life, and it is both insightful and moving...." Read more
"Excellent perspective! Very insightful, and I found many connections to the kids I work with who have autism...." Read more
"Insightful. Reminds one to be patient. The last story has me in tears the tie between a child and mother tugs." Read more
"Very informative as to how the autistic mind works. I definitely recommend it to parents and those who work with special needs children." Read more
Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as brilliant and worth their time, with one customer noting it's a must-read for parents.
"...Great book." Read more
"...Great read, highly recommend to everyone!" Read more
"...This is a great book and has been very helpful to me, my daughter and ultimately our autistic boy...." Read more
"...Excellent book. It will bring both laughter and tears." Read more
Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, describing it as beautiful prose that reads like a newspaper or magazine article, making it easy to understand.
"...Very nice It's a quick read that may turn into a bit of reference guide. Enjoy." Read more
"...Some just need more help. Plus it was an easy read!" Read more
"...It was pretty short and easy to read, so I was glad for that. The whole book was in question and answer format, with each answer being about a page...." Read more
"...It's fascinating, well written/dictated and incredibly accurate!!..." Read more
Customers find the book heartwarming, touching the heart and being poignant, with one customer noting how the boy effectively conveys his emotions and thoughts.
"Philosophic, insightful, touching, inspiring...." Read more
"...would be rough given the ‘language barrier’, but it is elegant, poignant, and incredibly insightful...." Read more
"...I especially liked the story of Shun at the end of the book. Very moving...." Read more
"...He is eloquent, candid, emotional and intelligent. It's only 194 pages...." Read more
Customers praise the book's compassionate insight, helping them expand their empathy and patience, and making them more empathetic towards those with disabilities.
"...about what it's like to be autistic and all at once it's poetic, heartbreaking, entertaining, and supremely informative...." Read more
"...Incredible that a mind as imaginative and intelligent and compassionate as anyone else's could be, as the author describes, trapped by a body that..." Read more
"...Best of all, it is prove that these children are insightful, caring, intelligent people that just need help finding an alternate way to communicate." Read more
"...simply as an information source, it is incredibly moving, almost heartbreaking, to see how many times Higashida refers to people "telling him..." Read more
Customers have mixed experiences with the book's ease of use, with some finding it easy to follow and keep their attention, while others note that it is repetitive and tedious.
"...but more than the style, which is simple, straightforward and thoroughly meaningful, it is the practicality of this book that is so important...." Read more
"Not super enlightening as I expected. It's repetitive and gets old quick. I bought it because I saw Conan o brine or someone like that recommend it...." Read more
"...However, from an outsiders/onlookers perspective, it was an easy, quick, insightful read that would be paired well with "The Curious Incident..." Read more
"This book is so straightforward and truthful that it made me tear up at done points and really put into perspective how my brother perceives the..." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the book's length, with some appreciating its short chapters while others find it too brief.
"The book is short and easy to read- not 'light' reading, but quick and insightful, from someone who really knows...." Read more
"...The book is short, but complete. These questions have been asked by every person working with autistic kids." Read more
"...I was hesitant that it wouldn't be long enough but it was the perfect length...." Read more
"...Which made it a really hard book to read if you are looking for a book to read for enjoyment, which learning something on the side...." Read more
Customers find the book unconvincing and not as interesting or revelatory as expected, with several customers describing it as disappointing and deceptive.
"...life and himself and his behaviors to that of a normal child is not believable, because he wouldn't have a complete understanding of what life is..." Read more
"This book is very deceptive...." Read more
"...accepted and then prevented entirely(noooo): this book is real and honest and one of a kind...." Read more
"Does not seem authentic. Tutor and interpreter wrote this book." Read more
Reviews with images
LIFE-CHANGING YET SIMPLE READ.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2025I read this book for a class about autism, and am so glad that I did. It’s an absolutely beautiful window into the inner workings and insecurities of a thirteen-year-old autistic boy. Naoki lends a hand, pours his heart and feelings and clever observations out onto the pages, which build a bridge of understanding from neurodiverse individuals to neurotypical ones. I think everything that is impacted or works with autism in some way, along with many others, should read and reflect on this book.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2024That change within yourself can help your autistic loved one(s) flourish just as the author manifestly stated by thanking his teacher and “Thanks to… my mom.”
MUST READ for those who have autistic loved ones. Question 23 made my heart sink but question 58 and the “Afterword” lifted my spirit again.
I always dreaded reading material containing technical/medical terminology describing everything regarding autism because I didn’t want to learn my child could get worse with age--- a form of denial. I especially dreaded reading material regarding a person’s specific experience because it is just that…specific to them. With that said, this was the perfect required dose of both. The book is largely a set of 58 questions one would expect a curious non-autistic person to ask an autistic person. The autistic person’s answers are concise and meticulous at the same time. Concise because he doesn’t provide long-winded “So it all began when…” answers; yet provides responses that help you understand why an autistic person may generally behave in a manner and why he specifically does or doesn’t. For example, “Is it true you hate being touched?” begins with “Personally, I have no particular problem with physical contact…” and ends with explaining for another autistic person “being touched by someone else means that the toucher is exercising control over the person’s body…”. At times, he delves into a deeper contemplation such as, “There’s also a dread that by being touched our thoughts will become visible.” Extremely insightful. It is difficult to provide a review without becoming long-winded myself. I hope this book helps you become more mentally and physically self-aware of your interaction with your autistic loved one(s) as it did for me.
5.0 out of 5 starsThat change within yourself can help your autistic loved one(s) flourish just as the author manifestly stated by thanking his teacher and “Thanks to… my mom.”LIFE-CHANGING YET SIMPLE READ.
Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2024
MUST READ for those who have autistic loved ones. Question 23 made my heart sink but question 58 and the “Afterword” lifted my spirit again.
I always dreaded reading material containing technical/medical terminology describing everything regarding autism because I didn’t want to learn my child could get worse with age--- a form of denial. I especially dreaded reading material regarding a person’s specific experience because it is just that…specific to them. With that said, this was the perfect required dose of both. The book is largely a set of 58 questions one would expect a curious non-autistic person to ask an autistic person. The autistic person’s answers are concise and meticulous at the same time. Concise because he doesn’t provide long-winded “So it all began when…” answers; yet provides responses that help you understand why an autistic person may generally behave in a manner and why he specifically does or doesn’t. For example, “Is it true you hate being touched?” begins with “Personally, I have no particular problem with physical contact…” and ends with explaining for another autistic person “being touched by someone else means that the toucher is exercising control over the person’s body…”. At times, he delves into a deeper contemplation such as, “There’s also a dread that by being touched our thoughts will become visible.” Extremely insightful. It is difficult to provide a review without becoming long-winded myself. I hope this book helps you become more mentally and physically self-aware of your interaction with your autistic loved one(s) as it did for me.
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2025Naoki Higashida was a 13-year-old boy Japanese boy with autism when he wrote this question-and-answer format book in 2006ish (published in 2007; translated into English and published in 2013 by David Mitchell). It is a remarkable look inside the mind of a boy locked into that mind by a body and brain that simply won't allow him to communicate with the world the way that neurotypical people mostly manage to do. The answers to the questions become repetitive -- asking caregivers for endless patience as the person with autism has their breakdowns b/c some pattern they were expecting has been broken and they can only react with the breakdown.
But... even if the answers are repetitive, think about who is answering them! A boy locked inside his own brain, somehow learning that symbols in a grid on a piece of cardboard can be used to communicate with the world outside his brain! Remarkable.
Young Mr. Higashida also writes stories, which proves that with him at least, his autism has not rendered him a mute robot; he has an active imagination also. I wish him well in his journey into adulthood. 4 stars.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2025Such an inspiring and insightful book that I think everyone should read. Incredible.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2014When an autistic child screams at inconsequential things, or bangs her head against the floor, or rocks back and forth for hours, parents despair at understanding why. Why are you so upset? Why do you hurt yourself? Why can't you tell me what's wrong? They fight to break through, to somehow communicate with the mind they know is in there, but when the child is nonverbal all parents have to go on is largely guesswork and the occasional adult memoir from someone who has long since learned to deal with their difficulties.
That is, until 13-year-old Naoki Higashida pointed at an alphabet board letter by letter and painstakingly wrote a book about himself.
“The Reason I Jump” is an extremely moving and candid book, mostly composed of Q&As that most people would never be so rude to ask but are desperate to know. “Why do you flap your hands in front of your face?” “Why do you get lost so often?” “Why can you never stay still?” “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly?” “Why don't you make eye contact when you're talking?” And, of course, “What's the reason you jump?” 58 questions in all, every one answered with honesty, humor, and a plaintive plea for understanding. It's the breakthrough that every parent or caregiver of an autistic child longs for.
Why does he repeat questions he already knows the answer to? Because his memory doesn't work as linearly as most people, Naoki says, and it helps him concentrate. But also because he's playing with words. “We aren't good at conversation, and however hard we try, we'll never speak as effortlessly as you do,” he said. “Repeating these is great fun. It's like a game of catch with a ball. Unlike the words we're ordered to say, repeating questions we already know the answers to can be a pleasure -- it's playing with sound and rhythm.”
Naoki also includes a few prose pieces and a short story as he strives to explain what daily life is like for him.
If there's a theme, it's that autism for Naoki means experiencing everything -- sights, sounds, scents, memories -- without filters and with little control or priority, and everything he does is an effort to focus, to dial the stimulus down to something manageable, to take away uncertainty. Wiggling his fingers in front of his face helps soften harsh lights. Commercials are wonderful because they're very short and he knows how they end. Spinning things is fascinating because while they spin, they move with perfect regularity. Disruptions to a routine are disastrous because then his future is impossible to predict. “Unchanging things are comforting,” he said, “and there's something beautiful about that.”
“This Reason I Jump” has been very popular in Japan since Naoki wrote it in 2006. The new English translation is by author David Mitchell (“The Cloud Atlas”) and his wife KA Yoshida, who translated it for their own use after they found it helped them understand their autistic son, and it's easy to see why it has struck a chord with so many people. For caregivers of an autistic child it's an unexpected godsend, a translator for a land they can't visit. But even if none of your relatives are autistic, you will certainly encounter people with varying degrees of these traits throughout your life -- autism covers a wide spectrum of conditions -- and the insights Naoki provides are invaluable.
That said, autistic people have their own reasons for the things they do, just as “normal” people do, and Naoki's answers ultimately explain only Naoki. But the hidden value of the book, as Mitchell says in his forward, is what it reveals about the mind of an autistic child. “It offers up proof that locked inside the helpless-seeming autistic body is a mind as curious, subtle sand complex as yours, as anyone's,” he said.
So why does Naoki jump? Because it's fun. Because when he jumps he can really feel where his body parts are and what they're doing for once. And because it feels as if he's “shaking loose the ropes that are tying down my body.
“When I jump, I feel lighter, and I think the reason my body is drawn skyward is that the motion makes me want to change into a bird and fly off to some faraway place.”
- Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2025I opened my package and to my surprise, the pages of my book were bowed. Upon further investigation… there was a half eaten Cheeto Puff inside! The Cheeto was apparently there for a period of time for the pages were stained. Although kind of funny, not happy about the surprise.
3.0 out of 5 starsI opened my package and to my surprise, the pages of my book were bowed. Upon further investigation… there was a half eaten Cheeto Puff inside! The Cheeto was apparently there for a period of time for the pages were stained. Although kind of funny, not happy about the surprise.Pairs well with Cheeto Puffs
Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2025
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2025Beautiful book. Needed to get it originally for a class but I enjoyed it way more than I thought.
Top reviews from other countries
レモネードReviewed in Japan on April 20, 20155.0 out of 5 stars A book on autism written by a person with autism
What makes this book really so special and unique is that it is written by a person with autism. Not by an expert or a doctor. This book tells you why people with autism do certain things at certain times or in certain situations, how they see the world, and how they are actually not so different from the rest of us as to how they feel about things in general etc... This is a real eye opener.
To be honest I wasn't so interested in this book at first but after reading some reviews of the book, I thought I had to read it. And the next thing I knew I had a copy in my hand. At first I couldn't even believe that it was written by a person with autism but after a while on You Tube I watched some documentary programs about Higashida Naoki, the author of the book, which convinced me that it really was written by him and that he really was a person with autism. The book has been so popular around the world now because it's such a special book written by a person with autism. You can study autism, you can read books on autism and you can deal with people with autism but you can never know what it's really like unless you are one with autism. It's a bit like "Autobiography of yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda, a book about a saint written by a real saint himself. Which makes the book so special. Anyway this book written by Higashida totally changed my idea of autism and people with autism. Autism may seem difficult to figure out but if you read this book, you'll know they are actually in a way not so different from the rest of us. They do look different but they are not different inside. Think about it, what if your legs and arms move against your will sometimes all of a sudden and you can't really control that? What if you yell and scream all of a sudden when you don't want to and you can't stop it from happening even if you want to? What if your body is beyond your control? And people around you think you are "different" just because of all those things? You just have no control over your body and what you do sometimes. You can read books and understand but you can't talk. You can talk inside you but are not able to communicate with others with words. As soon as you try to say something or anything aloud or put your words out of your mouth, your words just vanish. And people around you believe that you don't feel or think the same way they do but of course you do.
This is a wonderful book, indeed. Only, it is to be regretted that the English version is not as wonderful as the original Higashida Naoki wrote in Japanese. I recommend the original Japanese version.
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Juliana LossReviewed in Brazil on April 29, 20205.0 out of 5 stars Uma leitura poderosa
Que livro esclarecedor! Incrível ter a oportunidade de conhecer um pouco sobre um mundo a parte do que vivo no dia a dia. É uma benção poder que quer brar paradigmas.
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Halli GalliReviewed in Germany on June 24, 20235.0 out of 5 stars Sehr lesenswert
Mein Kind hat nach mehr als 10 Jahren die Diagnose Autismus bekommen. Wir wissen seit langem, dass es besondere Bedürfnisse hat, nur konnte keiner sagen was.
Dieses Buch, ich finde mein Kind so oft darin wieder, dass ich beginne zu verstehen, wie ich helfen kann. Habe es noch auf deutsch gekauft, damit mehr Menschen in unserer Familie es lesen können.
Miss DaffyReviewed in Spain on December 2, 20225.0 out of 5 stars Gave us a much better insight to our children's behaviours.
Brilliant. I'd recommend for anyone who has autistic people in their lives.
FlowerReviewed in France on May 22, 20245.0 out of 5 stars Things to know about Autism from a nonverbal Autistic boy’s viewpoint
I wanted to learn more about Autism from a nonverbal Autistic person’s viewpoint.
Very informative book! I totally recommend it to parents or caregivers of Autistic individuals.
I wanted to learn more about Autism from a nonverbal Autistic person’s viewpoint.5.0 out of 5 stars
FlowerThings to know about Autism from a nonverbal Autistic boy’s viewpoint
Reviewed in France on May 22, 2024
Very informative book! I totally recommend it to parents or caregivers of Autistic individuals.
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