I am normally not the type to cry over books. This one, I did. Good crying, though. It was a beautiful book. Carly is an amazing girl, and she's very lucky to have the family she does. Reading her story taught me more about autism than I've ever known. Definitely recommended. ( )

This is a book about a severely autistic girl who cannot speak, written by her father. The family lives in Toronto, Canada.

Carly is one of fraternal twin sisters; the other twin, Taryn, is completely normal as is the big brother, Matthew.

There are problems with Carly from the start; “she was missing most of her developmental milestones such as walking, talking, playing, and following basic instructions. She had lack of eye contact, social engagement, and speech. Her inability to make more than garbled sounds was diagnosed as apraxia – a motor-planning deficiency in which the muscles in her mouth failed to obey the directions from her brain”.

Carly finally walked at two and was toilet trained at five. She was diagnosed with severe autism and oral apraxia.

The parents, Arthur and Tammy, “dragged her from doctor to clinic to lab”.

On top of the problems with Carly, Tammy was diagnosed with lymphoma and needed chemotherapy.

Re Carly, they try everything – “a daily regimen of physiotherapy, speech.-language therapy, music and art therapy, and social skills development.

They find Barb, a speech-language pathologist who works with Carly for many years, and Howard, another excellent therapist; and also discover applied behaviour analysis, or ABA, a form of behaviour therapy. Carly benefits greatly from the ABA.

Carly tears around the house, jumps up and down, flings herself on furniture, hurls things from cupboards onto the floor, rips open packages and dumps their contents.

She learns to spell and is rewarded for her application with “potato chips”, which I think are what I would term “potato crisps”.

The parents persevere in trying new things with Carly and progress slowly occurs.

In order to get some rest and sleep, they at times place Carly in a residential facility for short periods,

Carly has learnt to spell and at one point her helpers are shocked by her using one of her voice output devices to spell out “Help teeth hurt”.

Through the years Carly spells out messages more and more and reveals her inner life and intelligence.

This is a remarkable book, wonderfully written by Carly’s Dad; he goes into full detail about her life; and we are given examples of her writing from her blog posts, where she answers questions from her many fans.

I would recommend the book to parents of other non-verbal sufferers of autism since it will provide them with hope and inspiration.

But Carly does not learn to SPEAK and I am wondering why her parents do not seek treatment, traditional or alternative, to heal her apraxia, if that is the problem, in order for her to gain speech.

In order to resolve various health problems, I am myself working with Jean Logan’s healing glyphs, which include one called Brain and Nervous System and another called Detoxification II, which clears the body of heavy metals like mercury and aluminium, and other toxins.

Also, the Medical Medium, Anthony William, tells us that autism is caused by mercury and perhaps other toxins in the brain. He therefore provides us with a recipe for his Heavy Metal Detox Smoothie, which clears them out for us.

Many of us are in need of this cleansing and I am drinking this smoothie as I write this. However, for optimal effect the smoothie needs to be taken daily or as much as possible.

To sum up, this is an inspiring book and all parents of children with severe autism should read it since it shows that miracles are possible for them. ( )

A great memoir about raising a child with autism. ( )

Written by Carly and her father, this is an incredible story of a young non-verbal autistic woman finding her "voice". Funny and inspiring, this is a book and a story you won't forget.

I liked the parts written by Carly much better than what her dad wrote. ( )