The curious book...
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Author Mark Haddon
After university he was employed in several different occupations, including working with people with disabilities and creating illustrations and cartoons for magazines and newspapers. He lived in Boston, Massachusetts, for a year with his wife until they moved back to England. Haddon then took up painting and selling abstract art.
In 1987, Haddon wrote his first children’s book, Gilbert’s Gobstopper. This was followed by many other children’s books, which were often self-illustrated.
Haddons works
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)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)
For adults
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)
- A Spot of Brother (2006)
- The Red House (novel) (2012)
Poetry volume
- The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea
Summary
Christopher John Francis Boone is a young boy who has a disability which makes it difficult for him to understand social norms like body language and other forms of human interaction. However, he is really good at maths, physics and logic based skills.
One day he finds out that his neighbours dog Wellington is lying on the garden dead. He loves the dogs, so he decides to find out who killed him and write a book about it.
He starts asking neighbours about Wellingtons dead. One of the neighbours tells him that his mother cheated on her dad.
When his dad finds out about book, he's angry and he makes him promise that he will stop writing a book and he takes his book away.
Christopher starts looking for a book when he finds many letters adressed on him. The letters were from him mom who he thought was dead. His dad tells him that he lied about this and also that he killed the dog.
Christopher gets scared of his dad and he escapes in London to live with his mom.
She decides do go back to their hometown where dad lives. Dad tries to apologize to Christopher, so he buys him a dog.
Autism
Early speech or behavioral interventions can help children with autism gain self-care, social, and communication skills. Although there is no known cure, there have been reported cases of children who recovered. Not many children with autism live independently after reaching adulthood, though some become successful.
Sympthoms:
- Stereotypy is repetitive movement, such as hand flapping, head rolling, or body rocking.
- Compulsive behavior is intended and appears to follow rules, such as arranging objects in stacks or lines.
- Sameness is resistance to change; for example, insisting that the furniture not be moved or refusing to be interrupted.
- Ritualistic behavior involves an unvarying pattern of daily activities, such as an unchanging menu or a dressing ritual. This is closely associated with sameness and an independent validation has suggested combining the two factors.
- Restricted behavior is limited in focus, interest, or activity, such as preoccupation with a single television program, toy or game.
- Self-injury includes movements that injure or can injure the person, such as eye-poking, skin-picking, hand-biting and head-banging.
Appendix
I loved the appendix because it was different than others. Can you solve the logical problem that Christoper set up?
Question
Prove the following result:
A triangle with sides that can be written in the form n 2 + 1, n 2 - 1 and 2n (where n > 1) is right-angled.
Show, by means of a counterexample, that the converse is false.
Iggy Pop - The Passenger
He rides and he rides
He looks through his window
What does he see?
He sees the bright and hollow sky
He see the stars come out tonight
He sees the citys ripped backsides
He sees the winding ocean drive
This song reminds me of Christopher. While he was traveling to London he was scared but I imagine him staring out of the window at the sky, stars, cities... For him it was something different, something new and he was very curious.
Fun facts about book and an author
- The idea for the book came from an image of dead poodle with a gardening tool sticking out of it that popped into Mark Haddon’s mind. He found it darkly humorous.
- He never planned that Christopher will be an autistic boy.
- This book was the first book which was published with two covers. One for teenagers and one for adults.
- Because Christopher hates colours yellow and brown, Haddon is often asked about his favourite colours, but he has no clue which are his favourite colours.
- When Haddon was a child, he wanted to be a palaeoanthprologist and discover Australopithecus bones in Kenya when he grew up.
- Haddon planned to study math and philosophy in collage before he discovered English literature.
- Haddon likes to marathon kayak when he isn’t writing.
- Steve Kloves, who wrote the Harry Potter films, is currently developing a film adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
Quotes
These are my four favourite quotes:
- “I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- “Sometimes we get sad about things and we don't like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don't know why we are sad, so we say we aren't sad but we really are.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- “All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
“On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
My Opinion
I loved the book very, very much. 3 years ago I also read it in Slovene but I actually forgot everything about it and I think it's way more interesting in English because things are better described, so you can imagine things better.
I liked that the chapters were not as they are in the other books. They are in order of the prime numbers starting with number 2 and ending with number 233.
There are also a lot of pictures and illustrations which I also liked, because you can imagine things better and don't have to concentrate on the text all the time.
Maybe I would like too see the movie about this book but I'm not really sure, because in my head I have my own imagination on the persons and scenes.
I would absolutely recommend this book for everyone who would like to read a different and very interesting book.