Enriching the Lives of Children with Autism, Inc. or ELCA, Inc., has wonderful summer programs at the end of summer for children on the spectrum. Since most children with special needs attend summer school, these camps fall during the peak period when the child might be getting bored with their summer.

Attend the Recess Skills Camp, which explores different games elementary school-aged children play during their recesses and the social skills required to navigate those games. There is also a School Readiness camp for the younger preschool set, who are just getting ready to dip their toes into the lake called "elementary school"!

ELCA, Inc. specializes in the ABA method.  To learn more about the Applied Behavior Analysis method, check out these books:

Success Strategies for Teaching Kids With Autism by Wendy Ashcroft

Applied Behaviour Analysis and Autism: Building a Future Together edited by Mickey Keenan

Targeting Autism:  What We Know, Don't Know, and Can Do to Help Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders by Shirley Cohen

This is Autism Awareness Month! If you have any summer camps to suggest, add a comment to this post. Watch for future posts about other kinds of summer camps. If you would like a particular kind of summer camp (theater, science, etc.) explored, mention this in your comment.

Jonathan Franzen's long-awaited novel Freedom lives up to the promise shown in his last novel, The Corrections, which won the National Book Award in 2001. Freedom focuses on the Berglund family of St. Paul, Minnesota. The first 25 pages of the book lay out the family’s story and set up the book’s conflicts. Patty Berglund is a Volvo-driving, home renovating, stay-at-home mom who may focus too much of her attention on her son Joey. Walter Berglund is a bicycle-commuting 3M employee who, we learn in the first paragraph of the book, eventually gets into trouble for working with the coal industry. Joey chafes at his mother’s attention and rebels by taking up with a girl whose mother is Patty’s nemesis while Jessica, the Berglund’s daughter, seems to fade into the background of the story. After all these stories are laid out, Franzen dives into each one, filling in the details of each. I enjoyed each story and though many of the plot twists were out of the realm of believability, it is still a good read.

Freedom has been out for several months and though I had to wait a long time for my hold to come in, there are now copies available at the San José Public Library. You might even be able to check it out and renew it if you need to. And you might need to; this book clocks in at 562 pages.  

April 12, 2011 will mark the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, or The War Between the States. On April 12, 1861 at 4:30 A.M. the first shots of the war were fired by Confederate forces on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. And so began a terrible conflict between the North and South that lasted four years. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the onset of the Civil War, many events and exhibits will be held throughout the United States. Check out these outstanding Civil War documentaries and books that the library has to offer.

• The Civil War This award winning PBS documentary written and filmed by Ken Burns chronicles the Civil War from beginning to end.
• The Civil War: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward with Ric Burns and Ken Burns is the companion book based on the Ken Burns PBS film documentary.

Popular historical fiction based on the Civil War include the following novels :

• Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier
• Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
• Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
• Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• North and South, by John Jakes

It is time to plan your summer vacation. If you have old friends and siblings in a foreign country, visiting that country will make it a meaningful trip. A great place to go is Taiwan, which has the most exotic scenery you can experience. To start planning and preparing for your trip there, be sure to visit the San José Public Library and get a few books and DVDs about Taiwan.