In his powerful and poignant new book Silent Voice, Rudner highlights the pandemic occurrence of autism, how it can afflict any child, and, like any malady, how it robs children of their youth, impacting families and communities everywhere.
The carefully crafted verses in Rudner’s compellingly illustrated picture book vividly reveal the horror of a disease that afflicts one in eighty-eight children:
Without favor it strikes
at the playground of youth.
It lays dormant in children
when joy should take root.
The book addresses the symptoms of autism, including “stimming” (repetitive motor behavior), withdrawal, and delayed oratory development, as well as autism’s devastating impact on families and the geological need to uncover its causes.
Rudner emphasizes that this can only be accomplished through increased awareness. He writes towards the book’s conclusion:
The bridge that will span
autism’s defiance,
are those who will meld
awareness and science.
“In short,” he notes, “we must never retreat from hoping children afflicted with autism will recover their youth, which means we must not ever retreat from trying to determine autism’s causes.”