As the number of children with autistic spectrum disorders explodes, the publishing industry has responded with a cottage industry of autism memoirs, including Making Peace with Autism: One Family's Story of Struggle, Discovery, and Unexpected Gifts by Susan Senator,  Jenny McCarthy's delusional books, and Temple Grandin's first hand accounts of living with autism. These books are on a shelf in our local Barnes and Noble at the edges of the children's section, close to the well-worn Thomas the Tank Engine train set, yet not too close. They are near the parenting books, yet not quite a part of them.

I read two autism memoirs last month — George & Sam: Two Boys, One Family, and Autism by Charlotte Moore and All I Can Handle: I'm No Mother Teresa: A Life Raising Three Daughters with Autism by Kim Stagliano.

Who reads these autism books? As Nick Hornby says in the foreword to George and Sam, if you've bent the spine of that book, you probably have a child with autism, or you're a grandparent trying to get to know your grandkid a little better. Autism books are in their own dusty shelf at the bookstore, but a few of those books deserve a broader audience, either because they give provide humanity for mysterious children or because they provide insight into the parent's world. These books take disabled children and their parents our of the dusty shelves in our society.

Stagliano and Moore have multiple children with severe autism. Their stories involve pooping on the sidewalk, losing children at Disney World, and locking up the sweets in the cupboard. Their kids are on the far end of the spectrum. The kid with mild Aspergers' syndrome who in a mainstream classroom with an aide is on the other. The Aspegers' kid may not attend the school prom, but thrives  in the geeky world of Math clubs and Lego leagues. Yet, these kids all have the same labels – autism, disability, special needs. In this world, you are either normal or you're not. Perhaps it's a good thing that we paint the disability brush so broadly. It creates a bigger political movement. But it also creates a huge line between us and them that I don't think really exists. I'm not really sure who is normal anymore.