A number of years ago I wrote a book called THE SILENT BOY, set in Pennsylvania in the early 1900's and illustrated by old photographs....the story of an autistic teenage boy, told by the young girl who befriends him.

Last week I saw a staged reading of the adaptation which has been produced by Arts Power, a  traveling theater company that specializes in taking theater...book adaptations....into the schools. When fully staged the characters are in period costime, as shown in this photo. But last week, at Columbia Teachers' College in NYC, (the set is shown here) the performers simply read the roles (and did so very beautfully. A lot of people in the audience were snuffling and dabbling their eyes. okay: I was, too)

Arts Power (you can see their website at www.artspower.org) also has a musical production of Anasatsaia Krupnik, as well as a number of adaptations of other well-known and well-loved books.  Their shows each run about an hour so they can fit comfprtably into a school schedule and they offer a lot of study resources.

I sound like a publicity person. And I'm not. But I am very impressed by the quality of this organization and what they offer to students.