Author: Cynthia Lord
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Major Awards: Newbery Medal Nominee (2007), Schneider Family Book Award for Middle School Book (2007), Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award (2008), Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award Nominee (2009)
Age Group: 9-13 years old
What does "normal" truly mean anyways? In Rules by Cynthia Lord, the protagonist Catherine longs to have a normal life. In the story, Catherine's brother David has Autism, which takes up the majority of her families time and attention. In order to help prevent some of David's behavior that she thinks is sometimes embarrassing, Catherine has created a list of rules for David to follow. Over the course of the summer, Catherine meets a new next door neighbor her same age named Kristi who she desperately wants to become friends with, and a nice boy named Jason who is a paraplegic that she meets in the waiting room at her brothers occupational therapy. Catherine has always wanted to have someone her age move in next door so they could be friends, so when Kristi moves in, she tries to fit in with her so she'll like her, but in doing that shes not being herself. With Jason on the other hand she bonded with him over her art, and they became nice friends who were able to truly open up to one another. Catherine's own actions threatened both relationships in the story. All the while this is happening Catherine is still teaching her brother David rules one of them being "no toys in the fish tank" which David doesn't always listen too hence the cover of the book. Catherine and her brother also share a special language between her and her brother quoting Arnold Lobel, author of the Frog and Toad books. Towards the end of the story, Catherine learns to be true and honest with herself and realizes that there really is no such thing as normal and not everything has to abide by the rules.
Rules was an incredibly heart-warming story that would make a wonderful edition for any 4th-8th grade classroom library. Although the story doesn't have any exact teaching correlations that could be formulated into a lesson, the book tells a beautiful story about acceptance and being true to yourself while also discussing different aspects of family and friendship dynamics. Rules is a story that I believe students will greatly enjoy reading. Having it as a choice in the library, I'm sure even if students may not be able to relate to all aspects of the novel they will still walk away from this story with something that resonated with them.
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