The actual books on my shelf — not a list built for the internet.
This isn’t a reading list I put together for the internet. It’s my actual bookshelf, the books I bought, borrowed, highlighted, and in some cases copied into a calligraphy notebook at midnight because the words needed to move slowly through my hands before they could settle.
Some of these I read before I knew I was autistic. Some I read after. Some I read for myself. Some I bought for my children. All of them changed something, not always dramatically, but enough that I kept them, or went back.
I’ll keep adding to this page as I read. If you’ve found a book that helped you on a similar journey, I’d love to hear about it.
The book links on this page go to Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores. If you buy through them, a small commission comes back to this blog at no extra cost to you.
On this shelf
After diagnosisRecognising yourselfParentingUnderstanding neurodivergenceBeside the dyingYour child’s bookshelf
Books That Held Me After Diagnosis
These are not autism books. They are books about meaning, suffering, and how to keep going, books I first read through my years in palliative care and returned to after my late diagnosis at forty. I wrote about why in I Didn’t Read Any Autism Books After My Diagnosis. The five quiet months when I reread them, before I could write again, are in The Silence Between Knowing and Writing.
Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor E. Frankl
Meaning is made, not given. I first read this as a young clinician sitting with dying patients. I reread it after diagnosis, and this time it was aimed inward. The argument is deceptively simple and impossibly hard: an ordinary life can be profoundly meaningful, if you decide it is.
Embracing Hope — Viktor E. Frankl
A companion to Man’s Search for Meaning, smaller, quieter, but no less direct. I read this one after diagnosis specifically. Frankl’s insistence that hope is a choice you make inside suffering, not something that arrives from outside it, was something I needed to hear more than once.
The Choice: Embrace the Possible — Edith Eva Eger
The biggest prison is the one we build in our own minds. Eger is a Holocaust survivor and psychologist, and her argument is unflinching: total responsibility, release from judgment, love yourself as human and whole. The part that stayed with me most was her writing about not passing the baggage of your suffering to the next generation.
The Gift: 14 Lessons to Save Your Life — Edith Eva Eger
The follow-up to The Choice. More practical, equally direct. Face the past, heal, achieve inner freedom. I read these two in close succession and they became a pair I return to.
Tuesdays with Morrie — Mitch Albom
Quick, grounding, and simple. Conversations between a man and his dying professor. A rich life is possible even from a deathbed. I have three Albom books. I reread this one specifically because it hands back the present when everything else feels like it’s been rewritten.
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life — Héctor García & Francesc Miralles
This one didn’t resolve anything. It held the question open. What is my purpose, what am I meant to be doing? I’m still not sure I’ve answered it. But it comforted me while I circled. Sometimes a book doesn’t give you the answer. It just keeps you company while you look.
The Daily Stoic — Ryan Holiday
One page a day. Short meditations on Stoic philosophy. I don’t read it religiously, but I reach for it when I need something steady beneath me. It asks small questions that turn out to be large ones.
A New Earth — Eckhart Tolle
About the ego, about suffering, about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. After diagnosis, I was trying to figure out which parts of me were real and which were the mask. Tolle doesn’t answer that question directly, but he asks it in a way that made the not-knowing feel less frightening.
Oneness with All Life — Eckhart Tolle
A distilled version of Tolle’s ideas. Short passages. I read this the way I read The Daily Stoic, in pieces, when I need to zoom out from my own head.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff — Richard Carlson
The first Carlson book I read, long before the smaller one further down this page. The title has become shorthand for something shallower than the book actually is. I go back to it every time I feel overwhelmed, which is to say I have gone back to it many times. Some books you read once and shelve. This one I keep within reach.
Wintering — Katherine May
On the seasons when life forces you to stop: illness, collapse, a world gone quiet. May’s argument is that wintering is not failure but weather. For me it is the reminder that slowing down and resting is how burnout is prevented, not how it is confessed, and that it is alright to be in a season of wintering.
Books for Recognising Yourself
These are the books for the season when you start to suspect. Some are memoirs by women who found out late, some are the practical references I wish had existed decades ago. If you are reading your child’s assessment paperwork and quietly recognising your own childhood, this shelf is for you. I know that season from the inside. I wrote about it in When You Start Wondering About Yourself, and about the childhood it sent me back through in The Threads of Life.
The Electricity of Every Living Thing — Katherine May
May walks the South West Coast Path through a hard winter of her life, and somewhere on that path realises she is autistic. I read it recently, because I wanted to know how this recognition arrives for other people. Her journey is quite different from mine, and that turned out to be the point. The road in has many shapes, and seeing hers helped me see the shape of my own more clearly.
A Little Less Broken — Marian Schembari
Schembari was diagnosed autistic in her thirties, after decades of being handed every other explanation first. I read it before my own diagnosis, in the season of deciding whether to put myself forward for assessment, because I wanted to know what it had been like for someone in my shoes. The title does the work: not fixed, not transformed, a little less broken. She writes the relief and the grief of a late diagnosis without choosing between them, which is the only honest way to write it.
Odd Girl Out — Laura James
A British journalist, married, working, raising children, is diagnosed autistic in midlife, and this is the year that follows. What makes it valuable is how ordinary the life around the diagnosis is. Nothing collapses. She simply starts to understand the woman who has been doing all of it, at cost, for decades.
Unmasked — Ellie Middleton
I heard Middleton on a podcast and went looking for the book. Half guide, half memoir, from a young British woman with both autism and ADHD. It is written for a generation that found the words earlier than mine did, and I read it partly with recognition and partly with something like envy. The chapters on masking name things I spent forty years doing without a word for any of it.
Motherness — Julie M. Green
I found this one through a podcast too, and stayed for the writing, which is quietly beautiful. An autistic mother writing motherhood from the inside: the sensory load of it, the guilt, the recognition that arrives through your own child. Her journey has some semblance to mine, more than most books on this shelf, and reading it felt like company.
How to ADHD — Jessica McCabe
I found McCabe’s YouTube channel first, and read the book because her strategies were practical enough to survive contact with an actual household. I went into my own assessment expecting ADHD, and even with the answer I got, this book earns its place. The strategies are built for brains that do not run on willpower and shame, which is most of the brains in this house.
The Highly Sensitive Person — Elaine N. Aron
I read this when I was trying to work out whether what I kept noticing in myself was autism or simply a personality that feels everything. I still cannot say for certain that I am not a highly sensitive person. There may be an overlap, and both things may be true. It was the first framework that made my nervous system sound like a design rather than a defect, and it was insightful even where it was not the whole answer.
How Not to Fit In — Jess Joy & Charlotte Mia
Written by two late-identified neurodivergent women, and it reads like being let into a conversation you have been waiting your whole life to overhear. Less a manual than a permission slip: to stop forcing the fit, to work with the brain you have.
How to Keep House While Drowning — KC Davis
Care tasks are morally neutral. That is the sentence this small book is built on, and it dismantles decades of shame in five words. A messy kitchen is not a character verdict, and functioning is not a measure of worth. I would hand this to any parent in survival mode, neurodivergent or not.
ADHD Is Awesome — Penn & Kim Holderness
The lightest book on this shelf, and deliberately so. Penn Holderness writes his ADHD with humour and without flinching, and his wife writes the view from beside it. The title is a reframe, and I am not sure I would go as far as awesome. But there are real strengths in this kind of brain, strengths you can build on, and this book is better than most at finding them without pretending the hard parts away.
Books That Changed How I Parent
I read most of these before my diagnosis, when I was trying to be a better parent without knowing why traditional approaches weren’t working for our family. In hindsight, they make more sense now. They were already pointing toward something I didn’t have a name for yet. The ones I keep returning to are practical and specific, written by people who understand that a child who can’t is not a child who won’t. The day that distinction finally landed in our house is in The Moment It Clicked. The years I spent getting it wrong are in Meltdowns vs Tantrums.
The Whole Brain Child — Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson
The book that changed how I understood what was happening during my children’s meltdowns, and, honestly, my own. It explains how the developing brain integrates, and why some moments need connection before correction. This was one of the first parenting books that made me feel like I wasn’t doing it all wrong.
Good Inside — Dr. Becky Kennedy
The core idea is that your child is good inside, even when their behaviour is hard, and so are you. I needed that second part more than I expected. This book is warm without being soft, and practical without being prescriptive.
The Explosive Child — Ross W. Greene
Greene’s premise is six words long: kids do well if they can. Not if they want to, if they can. The whole book unfolds from there into a way of solving problems with your child instead of at them. I have written elsewhere about what changed when I understood a meltdown was a can’t and not a won’t. This is where that understanding has the most rigour behind it, and on the hard days it reminds me to be gentler with my children.
Peaceful Discipline — Sarah Moore
A different approach to discipline that doesn’t rely on punishment or rewards. I found this before diagnosis, when I was looking for something that felt less combative and more connected. It aligned with how I wanted to parent even when I couldn’t articulate why the conventional methods felt wrong.
Simplicity Parenting — Kim John Payne
Less stuff. Less noise. Less scheduled activity. More space for children to be children. This book gave me permission to strip back when everything felt overwhelming, for the kids, and for me. In hindsight, it was also an act of sensory self-preservation I didn’t recognise at the time.
Courage to Grow — Laura Sandefer
About trusting children to find their own path, rooted in the Acton Academy model. I read this when we had the opportunity to put my twice exceptional son in an Acton Academy school overseas. It challenged my assumptions about what education and growth need to look like.
Books That Helped Me Understand Neurodivergence
These are the books I read when I was trying to understand my children, myself, or both, about autism, sensory processing, giftedness, and what it means to be wired differently. What I found when I turned that reading on myself is in The Wrong Operating System. What it changed about how I talk to my son’s school is in The Disclosure Dilemma.
Differently Wired — Deborah Reber
For parents raising kids who don’t fit the mould. Reber is honest about how isolating it can be, and practical about what to do anyway. This was one of the first books that made me feel less alone in the experience of parenting a child the world keeps misreading.
The Out of Sync Child — Carol Stock Kranowitz
The book on sensory processing differences. If your child is overwhelmed in environments that don’t bother other kids, or seeks sensory input in ways that confuse people, this explains what’s happening and what to do. As a former OT, I appreciated the rigour. As a parent, I appreciated the compassion.
What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew — Sharon Saline
Saline’s move is simple and quietly radical: she asks the children. The book is built around what ADHD kids themselves say about how it feels to be reminded, corrected, and managed all day. It softened something in how I speak to my children in the hard moments.
Gifted and Distractible — Julie F. Skolnick
The book on twice-exceptional children: the ones who are gifted and struggling at once, whose strengths hide their needs and whose needs hide their strengths. There are very few books written for exactly my eldest. This is one of them.
Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual-Spatial Learner — Linda Kreger Silverman
About children (and adults) who think in images rather than words. If your child is gifted in ways that don’t show up on traditional tests, or struggles with tasks that seem simple while excelling at things that seem impossibly complex, this book will make you feel seen. It made me feel seen too.
Books from My Years Beside the Dying
For close to a decade, my work was to sit with people who were running out of time. These are the books that came out of that world, or that took me back into it. I do not read them as sad books. I read them as instructions for the living, gathered from the only people who ever see the whole of a life. Some of what they taught me has already found its way into essays. A Legacy Left Unwritten and When Doing Our Best Doesn’t Feel Like Enough both began beside those beds.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich — Leo Tolstoy
The oldest book on this shelf and still the sharpest. A man climbs every rung his society offers, becomes ill, and discovers at the end that he may not have lived at all. I first read it at university, writing a paper on death and mortality, in the module that first pointed me toward palliative care. I went back to it once I was working inside that world. Everything the modern books on dying say, Tolstoy said first, and in fewer pages.
On Death and Dying — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
The book that gave us the five stages of grief, written from actual conversations with the dying. I read it as a clinician, and what stayed with me was not the framework everyone quotes but the listening underneath it. The stages were never meant to be a checklist you complete in order. The dying do not grieve in straight lines, and neither do the living.
When Breath Becomes Air — Paul Kalanithi
A neurosurgeon is diagnosed with terminal cancer at the height of his training, and writes his way toward the end. He did not finish it. His wife did. I have sat with many people in the season this book is written from, and I have read nothing that renders it more honestly.
For One More Day — Mitch Albom
Another of my three Albom books. A broken man is given one more day with his dead mother, and spends it learning everything he did not ask while she was alive. Sentimental, yes, and I do not care. Anyone who has sat at a deathbed knows the question this book is built on: what would you give for one more ordinary day.
An Hour to Live, an Hour to Love — Richard & Kristine Carlson
Richard Carlson wrote his wife a letter answering the question of what he would do with one hour left to live. Not long after, he died suddenly, and the letter became this small book. It was the second of his books I read; the first sits further up this page. It takes minutes to read, it is the least clever book on this shelf, and it may be the one I would press into someone’s hands first.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying — Bronnie Ware
Ware spent years in palliative care and wrote down what the dying told her they regretted. I worked in the same world, and I can tell you her list is true. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. For anyone who spent decades masking without knowing it, that first regret does not read like a warning. It reads like a diagnosis.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone — Lori Gottlieb
A therapist loses her footing and becomes a patient, while her own patients, one of them a young woman who is dying, carry the rest of the book. I came across it after my diagnosis and decided to read it, and it turned out to be about the gap between knowing things about grief and living inside them, which is a gap I know from both sides. It is also, quietly, one of the best books about being helped that I have read.
Books for Your Child’s Bookshelf
These are books I’ve bought for my own children. Many of them are about finding your voice, managing big feelings, and learning how your brain works. I’ve grouped them loosely, but honestly, most kids who need one of these will benefit from several.
Free download
If you would like to take this shelf with you, I made the children’s books into a free guide. Books for the Child Who Feels Everything. Grouped by what a child needs, with an age band beside every title.
Finding Your Voice
For children who are selectively mute, painfully shy, or still learning that their voice matters, even when it’s quiet. My youngest is one of those children. A Heart Like Mine is about learning what to hand him.
- My Name is Ben and I Don’t Talk Sometimes
- My Name is Eliza and I Don’t Talk at School
- Little Boost: Too Shy for Show and Tell
- Lola’s Words Disappeared · Bookshop →
- Maya’s Voice · Bookshop →
- Silent Sam
- Shy Ninja — Mary Nhin · Bookshop →
Executive Functioning & Flexible Thinking
For kids who struggle with planning, initiating tasks, adapting when things change, or managing frustration when things don’t go as expected. Many of these are part of the Executive FUNction series and work well read together or individually.
- I Just Want to Do It My Way — learning to be flexible · Bookshop →
- Thanks for the Feedback, I Think — learning to accept feedback · Bookshop →
- Time to Get Started — learning to take initiative · Bookshop →
- My Day is Ruined — teaching flexible thinking · Bookshop →
- How Did You Miss That? — teaching self-monitoring · Bookshop →
- What’s the Problem? — teaching problem solving · Bookshop →
- What Were You Thinking? — learning to think before acting · Bookshop →
- Fix It with Focus — improving attention and focus · Bookshop →
- Of Course It’s a Big Deal — managing emotional reactions · Bookshop →
- I’ll Never Get That Done — breaking tasks into steps · Bookshop →
- It Was Just Right Here — organising and keeping track of things · Bookshop →
- How Do I Remember All That? — building memory strategies · Bookshop →
- Pause Power — learning to pause before reacting
Choices & Consequences
Interactive books where your child chooses what the character does, and sees what happens. These are brilliant for neurodivergent kids who need to practise decision-making in a low-stakes way, and they ask to read them again and again.
- What Should Danny Do? — Adir Levy & Ganit Levy · Bookshop →
- What Should Danny Do? School Day · Bookshop →
- What Should Danny Do? On Vacation · Bookshop →
Understanding Feelings
For children who feel big things but don’t yet have words for them. These books name the emotions, normalise them, and show kids they’re not alone in what they feel.
- When I’m Feeling series — Trace Moroney (includes titles on feeling happy, sad, angry, scared, lonely, jealous, kind, and loved)
- How Do I Feel? A Dictionary of Emotions for Children
- All About Feelings — Usborne · Bookshop →
- Read and Learn series on Feelings — Child’s Play
- Percy Gets Upset — Stuart Murphy
- What’s Worrying You? — Molly Potter
- Llama Llama Time to Share — Anna Dewdney · Bookshop →
- Llama Llama Mad at Mama — Anna Dewdney · Bookshop →
- Daniel Tiger’s 5-Minute Stories · Bookshop →
- Daniel Tiger’s 3-Minute Bedtime Stories · Bookshop →
- More Daniel Tiger 5-Minute Stories · Bookshop →
- In My Heart — Jo Witek · Bookshop →
- Too Much! An Overwhelming Day — Jolene Gutiérrez · Bookshop →
- I Choose series — Elizabeth Estrada · Bookshop →
Kindness, Empathy & Social Skills
For kids learning how to navigate the world with other people in it, paying attention, listening, being kind, saying sorry, and understanding that everyone is different.
Bucket Filling series — Carol McCloud:
- Have You Filled a Bucket Today? · Bookshop →
- Bucket Filling from A to Z · Bookshop →
- Growing Up with a Bucket Full of Happiness · Bookshop →
Ninja Life Hacks series — Mary Nhin:
- Angry Ninja · Bookshop →
- Grumpy Ninja · Bookshop →
- Grateful Ninja · Bookshop →
- Positive Ninja · Bookshop →
Other favourites:
- Will You Be My Friend? — Molly Potter
- Sorry, Really Sorry — Joanna Cotler
- Zach Apologizes — William Mulcahy · Bookshop →
- Reach Out and Give — Cheri J. Meiners (Free Spirit Publishing) · Bookshop →
- Accept and Value Each Person — Cheri J. Meiners (Free Spirit Publishing) · Bookshop →
- Be Polite and Kind — Cheri J. Meiners (Free Spirit Publishing) · Bookshop →
- Share and Take Turns — Cheri J. Meiners (Free Spirit Publishing) · Bookshop →
- Cool Down and Work Through Anger — Cheri J. Meiners (Free Spirit Publishing) · Bookshop →
- What to Say When You Don’t Know What to Say — Davina Bell · Bookshop →
- What to Do When You’re Not Sure What to Do — Davina Bell · Bookshop →
- Best Behavior series (six-book board set) — Free Spirit Publishing · Bookshop →
- How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids — Tom Rath & Mary Reckmeyer · Bookshop →
Without Limits & Stepping Up Social Skills series — Bryan Smith:
- Kindness Counts · Bookshop →
- Mindset Matters · Bookshop →
- Empathy is My Superpower! · Bookshop →
- Stress Stinks · Bookshop →
- Everyone’s Contributions Count · Bookshop →
- Speak Up For Yourself · Bookshop →
- What’s Your Choice · Bookshop →
- But I Need Your Help Now! · Bookshop →
- Are You Working Hard or Hardly Working? · Bookshop →
- That’s Wrong! · Bookshop →
Behaviour Matters series — Sue Graves:
- Monkey Needs to Listen — paying attention · Bookshop →
- Turtle Comes Out of Her Shell — building confidence · Bookshop →
Growth Mindset & Brain Science for Kids
For kids who need to know that their brain can grow, stretch, and change, and that being different isn’t being broken.
- Your Fantastic Elastic Brain — JoAnn Deak · Bookshop →
- Good Night to Your Fantastic Elastic Brain — JoAnn Deak · Bookshop →
- The Magical Yet — Angela DiTerlizzi · Bookshop →
- Giraffes Can’t Dance — Giles Andreae · Bookshop →
- My Brain Is a Home — Orlanda Bettison
- My Mindful Brain — Orlanda Bettison
- I Can Do Hard Things — Gabi Garcia · Bookshop →
- My Strong Mind — Niels van Hove · Bookshop →
- The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be — Joanna Gaines · Bookshop →
- Resilience — Jayneen Sanders · Bookshop →
- All Cats Are on the Autism Spectrum — Kathy Hoopmann · Bookshop →
- All Dogs Have ADHD — Kathy Hoopmann · Bookshop →
- All Birds Have Anxiety — Kathy Hoopmann · Bookshop →
- Way of the Warrior Kid series — Jocko Willink (chapter books, for older readers) · Bookshop →
For the Child Who Worries About Losing You
For the child who holds on at the door. Separation sits underneath so much of what looks like refusal, and these books say the one thing that child needs said: the connection holds, even when you cannot see each other.
- I Love You to the Moon and Back — Amelia Hepworth · Bookshop →
- I Love You, Little Bear: A Storybook to Share
- How Do I Love You? — P.K. Hallinan
- No Matter What — Debi Gliori · Bookshop →
- The Invisible String — Patrice Karst · Bookshop →
This page is a living document. I add to it as I read. Last updated July 2026.