Review by Howard Michael Fuchs

School Success for Kids with Asperger's Syndrome is a welcome addition to the existing literature. This is not only an informative work on Asperger's Syndrome (AS), but a practical guide for parents, educators, and professionals. It provides methods and well-reasoned strategies for optimizing the school experience for kids with AS. It also educates the uninitiated about this complex form of autism that was not widely embraced until recently (it was 1994 when it was first included in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

The book is broken down as follows:
Chapter 1, What is Asperger's Syndrome?
Chapter 2, How Might AS Appear to a Parent?
Chapter 3, Recognizing and Diagnosing AS;
Chapter 4, Additional Aspects of AS;
Chapter 5, Best Practices in School;
Chapter 6, Strategies and Interventions that Work in the Classroom;
Chapter 7, Working with the School System;
Chapter 8, Best Practices for Parenting and Raising Kids with AS;
Chapter 9, College, Work, and Independent Living;
and Chapter 10, School Success for Kids with AS.

Following these chapters are five appendices, providing quick reference guides to resources, and useful checklists and forms for parents and educators.

Why is School Success for Kids with Asperger's Syndrome a mandatory four star read for gifted education professionals? All too often we teachers of the gifted are presented with learning and behaviorally disabled students without having had the pedagogical training we need to teach them effectively. And to teach AS kids effectively it is paramount to understand the issues they face. Among others, these include problems with social interactions; problems with abstract reasoning; problems with anxiety, depression, and emotional regulation; problems with attention, organization, and other areas of executive function. By providing us with feasible intervention strategies, checklists, a road map that asks "Who are these kids? How do we find them? What do good programs and services look like?", and three-dimensional case studies, the authors give us some information we need if we are going to help AS kids successfully meet the challenges before them.

Additionally, I was glad to see that the authors – Stephan Silverman, child/adolescent psychological diagnostician with more than thirty years of experience, and Rich Weinfeld, a national leader in the education of smart children with learning difficulties – avoid the problems associated with trendy over-labeling. They wisely state that not every exceptionally gifted person and not every socially inept person has AS. Yet, they caution, for those accurately diagnosed with AS, eventual success as an adult rests on early intervention.

If I have a criticism, it is that I would like to have seen more discussion about the diversity within the AS population, certainly including more about AS students who are gifted and talented. Also, are there differences between boys and girls with AS? Are there differences along racial or socio-economic lines? Would the strategies and checklists the authors provide have to be modified for different sub-groups within the AS population?

Nonetheless, as an educator of gifted learners, I am grateful to the authors for having written School Success for Kids with Asperger's Syndrome. It's going to be invaluable for me as time goes by. I remember students I've had in the past who might have had their educational needs better supported had I read it earlier, students like the aficionado and self-proclaimed expert on some of the more esoteric happenings in the War of Roses . Thanks to Stephan Silverman and Rich Weinfeld, we have a better understanding of another dimension of human development as it intersects with giftedness.

By day, Howard Michael Fuchs teaches a fifth grade class at Hunter College Elementary School for gifted kids in New York City. By night, he is an adjunct lecturer for Hunter College's graduate Gifted and Talented Extension Program where he teaches prospective teachers of the gifted about, inter alia, twice-exceptional students.