Autistic girl charactor in young adult book by Ann Martin

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Popular author Ann M. Martin is stopping by the Louisville Free Public Library on Friday. The name may be familiar to many readers, as she’s the author of the “The Baby-Sitters Club,” an influential series of young adult books that have sold more than 180 million copies.

Her new YA offering, “Rain Reign,” is a look into the life of Rose Howard, a young neurodivergent girl on the autism spectrum. A hurricane hits her town, and Rose has to step outside her comfort zone when her dog Rain escapes.

According to Martin, the character of Rose Howard started out as a neurotypical person with a few quirks.

“I hadn’t yet thought of her as being on the autism spectrum — she was just quirky and living with her father on the fringes of things, both emotionally and physically,” says Martin. “But I wasn’t yet sure what her story was going to be.”

One of those quirks — a penchant for homophones (words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings) — is one the author shares.

“I’m about as obsessed with homophones as Rose is in the book … I have this sense of delight when I think of a new homonym,” she says.

Martin and Rose both have a mental list of “rules” that govern what kind of homophones are better.

“They have to sound exactly alike,” explains Martin. “Like hall and haul, as far as I’m concerned, are not homonyms because they’d don’t sound exactly alike. Rose and I do not include foreign words, because then it would just get out of hand, for the same reason we don’t include people’s names.”

As Martin continued to conceive the character that became Rose, she realized it was an opportunity to create a neurodivergent character. She went to great lengths to portray Rose in a realistic manner, which came not only from wanting to write the character well and to respect the population she was depicting, but also from her own life experiences.

“I had some experience years ago. I worked with — then they were just called ‘children with autism’ — and this was in the late 1970s and early 1980s … so I had that background,” she says.

Her research included visits to a school for neurodivergent youth.

“When I decided Rose was going to be on the spectrum, I called a friend of mine who co-founded a school called The Center for Spectrum Services, and I was able to not only pick her brain, but go to the school,” she adds.