With the Light... Vol. 8: Raising an Autistic Child

With the Light is a series that I've followed since it was first published in English and I enjoyed every page of it. It took me quite a long time to find the last Volume #8 (mostly my own fault) and have read it only recently. The first three chapters continue the story where it left off from Volume #7. Sachiko and the Azuma family are now living in her husband Masato's family residence with his mother. Although Sachiko works hard and copes the best that she knows how, she continually chafes under the yoke of Masato's mother's criticism and rigid traditional values. However, in these chapters we do see the beginnings of the ice between them melting. After spending another visit with Okamura and his employer Ryoumou, Masato's mother starts to develop some appreciation for the talents of those with autism. While it may be small and simple, this shows for the first time a positive attitude on her behalf which previously had been wholly negative. At the same time Sachiko begins to learn more from her mother-in-law about traditional housekeeping and realizes that she wasn't really doing anything wrong before. It's just that her own family growing up was modern and casual and did not train her in traditional methods of housekeeping. Instead of being a problem, housekeeping becomes a new challenge to learn. Sachiko also welcomes her mother-in-law's willingness to help out with raising Kanon. Shortly after this, Masato's sister comes to visit with her family, and here sadly the main storyline ends.The final two chapters are presented in an unfinished storyboard form. Here Keiko Tobe does her best to tie up many loose ends with characters from earlier in the series: Eri-chan, Gori-sensei, Kaori, Nobuaki-kun Kanata-kun, Moe-chan, and many others. Sachiko also meets up with one of the mothers of one of Hikaru's new classmates and between the two of them they hatch a marvelous plan for a new community center like Rainbow House. This part serves as the conclusion of the story and while premature I am sympathetic for its necessity. The cover sketch of Eri-chan for chapter 29 looks like it would have been amazing cute, and I am so sad that it and the other pages were never properly completed.Also presented with With the Light volume 8 are two single chapter stories written previously: Thank You Sensei, and Spring Sunshine. The title of Thank You Sensei is a play on the word "sankyuu" which is interpreted to mean "maternity leave". For the past year Hiromi Yamamoto has been working as a substitute teacher while the regular teacher was out on maternity leave. During her time away the regular teacher decided to resign, however being a substitute does not mean that Yamamoto-sensei can inherit her current position. In fact, the rigid and uncaring school bureaucracy is intent on her leaving as soon as her contract is up. The resulting forced departure puts a great stress on all concerned, but ... well I don't want to spoil the ending.Spring Sunshine is a story about a grumpy old man who in his twilight years strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young boy that just moved into town. Fujita-san lives all alone in the house that he worked all of his life to pay for. His children have moved away and his wife is deceased so all he has left to care for is the flower garden he had started with his wife. Over the years he has grown to love the flowers but detest other people because they do not understand or care about him. Then comes along Sugaru who accidentally flings a boomerang into Fujita-san's yard. Initially angry, Fujita tries to get Sugaru to leave, but the young boy's interest in the flowers melts his anger, and eventually the old man's heart as well. Curiously similar to the story of Kevin and the old man with the shovel in the first Home Alone movie, Spring Sunshine brought tears to my eyes. It really is a lovely story with a bittersweet ending.And lastly, some personal comments from me. I was greatly saddened to hear about the passing of Keiko Tobe. I will treasure the stories you created for all time and I am sure many of your other fans will also. These were all wonderful gifts to me, Thank you Tobe-sensei!

I have been following this series since I first saw this on the bookshelf at Barnes n Noble (or was it Borders before it closed down?) and it is a masterpiece. Though it is set in Japan and there are obvious cultural differences, the story captures the universal experience of becoming a parent and discovering your child is autistic. I am no parent myself but I am autistic. I can only imagine the feelings and experiences of my parents when they learned I was autistic. Though I myself am high-functioning and more developed than Hikaru, that did not mean I did not relate to him. His kind and gentle nature, his love for his sister, and his incidents all bring back memories of when I was young and not so developed with behavior and social skills. By following his life story, I am reminded of my own and I am humbled by those memories. Outside of Hikaru's life when the story switches to focus on his family and friends, we see the best and worst of people. This is a series that will warm your heart and at other times break it, open your eyes and perhaps change the way you look at things, and not only make you aware of people with autism but believe in them as well. It is such a shame that the author passed away and was unable to finish her wonderfully touching books but I will not forget her or her books. Should you choose to get into this series, you will not regret it.

Having read and purchased the previous 7 volumes, I found that With the Light 8 seemed to focus more on the way Hikaru's mother and grandmother viewed his disability than it did on the disability, or on Hikaru's perspective. In previous volumes, it felt more like the focus was on seeing things from Hikaru's perspective, which was the main draw of the story for me. The first "half" of the book is illustrated in the same style as the previous 7 volumes, and the second "half" of the book is all storyboards with text put off to the side. I found it very hard to try to read the storyboards, but I am very pleased that the publisher included them. It feels like a proper way to honor the hard work that the author was not able to finish.At the end of the book are two short stories that are not related to Hikaru or autism in any way, shape, or form. These two short stories are illustrated in the style of the first 7 books of With the Light. There is no explaination of why they are there- perhaps they were put there to flesh out the size of the volume (about half the size of previous books of this series) or perhaps the short stories numbered in some of the last work the author created, and it's a nod to her hard work.For me, the final short story, which is about an elderly man who meets a young neighborhood boy, was reminiscent of a story I read about an elderly man who wanted to bring his sick daughter bananas, from "Tokyo Babylon" by CLAMP, for me, and was extremely moving. I teared up... haha... The other short story I had trouble getting into, and was about a substitute teacher whose students are ridiculously attached to her and vice versa, for reasons I cannot fathom. Apparently just because she likes them a lot.Although I prefer the first 7 volumes more than this volume, I think it was worthwhile, and would buy it again. I would recommend this volume to anyone who has already read the first 7 volumes, but probably would not recommend anyone try to read this book as a stand-alone without having first invested their minds in the prior books.