Yara Is Fine Now

Yara is doing so much better. Nothing inside changed. She just got quieter about it.

Three years after Yara Knows the Plan. Yara is eleven. When the timetable changes now she says "oh, okay," and her face does the thing faces do. Nobody taught her how — she watched, and collected hundreds of faces, and runs them like a list, six hours a day. It works. It costs about everything she has. By four o'clock she walks in the front door with nothing left, and the people who get that are her family. Then Alma says the one thing nobody else has: you don't have to do it with me.

This is book 2 of six. The 5B Books pick up the six children from the 2B picture books three years on — same class, same six, eleven now. Each book is told in one child's own voice.

What is in the book

• Eight short chapters, written for readers aged 10–12
• Told in the first person — a child explaining herself, not an adult explaining a child
• A page for the grown-up on masking: why the meltdown at home is the bill for the day at school, and why "just be yourself" is not usable advice
• Three questions to talk about afterwards

How it works

Works on its own, and works better if you know the picture book. Autism is named on the last page, for the adult — the story itself just tells you what six hours of running the list feels like from the inside.

Instant download. EPUB for e-readers and tablets, PDF for everything else. Both files included.