The Curious Incident
of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon, the writer
Mark Haddon is an author, illustrator and screenwriter who has written fifteen books for childres and won noumerous prizes. He lives in Oxford. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time won the Whitebread Novel on the Year Award, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the South Bank Show Bood Award, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
After college, he was employed in several different occupations. One included working with people with disabilities, and another included creating illustrations and cartoons for magazines and newspapers. Haddon worked with autistic individuals as a young man.
Bibliography
Youth titles
- Gilbert's Gobstopper (1987)
- Toni and the Tomato Soup (1988)
- A Narrow Escape for Princess Sharon (1989)
- Agent Z Meets the Masked Crusader (1993)
- Titch Johnson, Almost World Champion (1993)
- Agent Z Goes Wild (1994)
- At Home
- At Playgroup
- In the Garden
- On Holiday
- Gridzbi Spudvetch! (1992)
- The Real Porky Phillips (1994)
- Agent Z and the Penguin from Mars (1995)
- The Sea of Tranquility (1996)
- Secret Agent Handbook
- Agent Z and the Killer Bananas (2001)
- Ocean Star Express (2001)
- The Ice Bear's Cave (2002)
- Boom! (An improved version of Gridsbi Spudvetch) (2009)
For adults
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)
- A Spot of Bother (2006)
- The Red House (2012)
Poetry
Summary of The Curious Incident...
Christopher is a 15 years old special teenager who loves raining days, any animal (special dogs and rats), mystery books, Maths and Physics. However he hates crowded places, to be touched, screams, low sounds, speak with strage people and the colour yellow and brown (for him means bad look).
He wants to solve a mystery, who kill Wellington, a neighbour's dog, with a garden fork. So, he decides to work as a detective (he loves the Sherlock Holmes' novels) to solve the crime and writes a personal book.
To solve the crime he must make a big effort to speak with neighbours (for him strange people) and he will discover a big secret that will change his life.
This is an iniciatic novel (the main character changes with several or a great personal experience) which is written in first person for a teenager who has Asperger's Syndrome.
Reviw Book
In my opinion, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a good novel because is easy to read (it is written from a point of view of an Aspeger teenager) and it is interesting because there is a mystery to solve and because the main character is a special person.
When you are reading the novel, you can learn many things about Asperger persons, however there are a lot of Asperger diseases.
I think the book is well written in first person. The author knows very well how an Aspereger person speaks, thinks, communicates with their relatives, their limitations (for example: they do not understand the metaphors) and their skills (for example a prodigious memory).
I enjoyed a lot reading this novel and if I come back to London, I want to go to the theatre to compare the book with the play. I recommend it!
Vocabulary
- wound (page 1)
- muzzle (page 1)
- poodle (page 1)
- stroke (page 1)
- cross (page 4)
- faithful (page 4)
- proper (page 8)
- monkey-bussines (page 11)
- pellet (page 16)
- clot (page 37)
- shed (page 40)
- bloody (page 48)
- kiddo (page 58)
- at large (page 67)
- groaning (page 68)
- grab (page 103)
- mess (page 106)
- blame (page 136)
- giddy (page 148)
- cage (page 154)
- wooble (page 201)
- eyelid (page 232)
- patch (page 267)
A representative fragment of the novel (page 4)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (fragment page 4)
5
I pullet the fork out of the dog and lifted him into my arms and hugged him. He was leaking blood from the fork-holes.
I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do no tell lies because they cannot talk.
I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs Shears running towards me from the patio. She was wearing pyjamas and a housecoat. Her toenails were painted bright pink and se had no shoes on.
She was shouting, "What in fuck's name have you done to my dog?"
I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is goint to happen.
"Let go of the dog", she shouted. "Let go of the fucking dog for Christ's sake".
I put the dog down on the lawn and moved back 2 metres.
She bent down. I thought she was going to pick the dog up herself, but shi didn't.
Perhaps she noticed how much blood there was and didn't want to get dirty. Insted, she started screming again.
I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onte the grass. The grass was wet and cold. I was nice.
Main characters drawings
Wellington
It is the dog that was killed in the begining of the book.
He named the novel.
Christopher
He is the main character, he tell us the story in first person.
Siobhan
She is one of the Christopher's teacher.
What is the Asperger syndrome?
The Asperger syndrome is a serious upset of the development, it is considered as a neurobiological upset where there are abnormalities in these development aspects:
- Social abilities.
- Use of the language as communicational purposes.
- Behaviour characteristics link with repetitive acts or perseverant.
- Limited range of interest.
Children with this diagnostic have serious social, behaviour and communicational disabilities. Some characteristics can be:
- Social clumsy and difficult relationship with other children or adults.
- Guileless and credulous.
- Frequently, without conscious about feelings and intentions of the others.
- They no accept changes in their tasks.
- Literal language and comprehension.
- Hardly sensitive with loud sounds, colours, tsstes or smells.
They can have:
- An extraordinary memory.
- Problems to understand things.
- Sleepy or feeding problems.
And more and more...
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in the Apollo Theatre of London
Performances of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Apollo Theatre have been cancelled from 20 December – 4 January.