A World Without Barriers

A World Without Barriers, was inspired by my youngest brother Ahmed, who's affected by Autism and had a lot of input to this book and especially with illustrations. This book was created throughout one of my design courses where I chose to develop a children's book about Autism and try to invite different age groups to their world.


The research behind the book focuses on introducing a world of a child with Autism, where I found people unaware fully of how a child of Autism thinks and acts; to keep it child friendly I reflected an imaginary world without barriers, because people with autism are known to be ultimate day dreamers and mostly their mind has no limits to what they create and visualise.


This book has nothing to do with the knowledge about Autism or any medical explanations to it, but it focused on showing that their world is as beautiful and interesting as normal people, and since children have a hard time understanding people with special cases and medical issues, I tried to draw a world where this child with Autism lives in a fantasy, so instead of scaring them by facts that they don't really understand, first try to get them to interact and be interested in the world of a child with Autism and get them involved.


I've seen my brother grow into a 19-year-old man, and because he was in a normal school and interacted with normal kids, he became better and it helped a lot in developing his skills, that's why this book is important to me, I believe children should be interested and if they have to face a child with Autism they can easily link to this story and imagine this special child with his fantasy world, and hopefully be less frightened and interact more.


I created this book as simple as possible for children to understand, and with a lot of passion for their parents to relate to. 


The e-book was displayed as part of the exhibition “Change in Motion: A Storybook Exhibition” held at Zayed University from May 9th – 16th, 2013.


Its the first book that I have ever written and illustrated, I hope you all like it!



Love,

Fatma Al Hashemi 

www.fatmaalhashemi.com