Book Review of A Day With No Words by Tiffany Hammond

Short Version

**For a longer discussion of this book, see here.

A Day with No Words, by Tiffany Hammond is beautifully written, lovingly illustrated by Kate Cosgrove, and fills parts of a void that some of us didn’t even realise existed.

In short rhymes that flow so effortlessly they read like prose, Tiffany Hammond’s A Day with No Words invites us into a day of a Black non-speaking autistic young person and his Mama as they do some of the things he like. Throughout it all, they communicate through communication devices/talkers (his orange, hers green), as Mama checks what he wants to do next or how much space he needs, as they visit the park when there is no crowd or when they order his favorite fries.

This book is a first in several ways. It may well be the first children’s book about an autistic young person that’s written by a Black autistic author. It might also the first visualised story about a main character who is non-speaking and who is casually shown using his talker, sometimes showing the actual words and images he presses on the screen, at other times carrying it strapped across his shoulder or spread out on the park bench next to his Mama’s talker. And it’s the first fictional depiction of a Back autistic non-speaker and his family having a mostly good day, with loving interactions between them.

You may notice that there seems to be quite a lot of fuzz about the book as so many readers and supporters are actively promoting it, it already hit all-time-bestselling lists and is beginning to sell out by the day it officially came out (today). Perhaps you may wonder if this is more due to some sort of trend than to the qualities of the actual book itself, but allow me to reassure you that the book does it all more than it’s share of justice.

I look forward to a future where there will be lots of books like this, including by (Black) non-speakers themselves. In the meantime, I wholeheartedly recommend this unique and important book.
If you can afford it – or can get libraries to stack it – I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.