Fitting In

Author and illustrator Thompson's autobiography/memoir displays all the wonder, complexity, joy and sadness found in his more than 70 children's books (The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley, etc.). Now in his 70s, Thompson looks back on a life filled with numerous ups and downs, including his turbulent youth in 1940s England ("Normal people gloried in the simple joys of life... I wanted that"); his time as an art student in the 1950s and 1960s discovering jazz at the famous Ealing Club; and living in the Outer Hebrides as a ceramicist in the 1970s. He discovers that he "would never fit in to the mainstream... nor did I want to." During these times, Thompson experienced major bouts of depression, resulting in hospital stays that he describes in searing detail ("People aged like compost, their colours faded, their hopes withered"). He is brutally honest about how his depression contributed to the endings of his first two marriages. In 1990, he wrote his first book, moved to Australia, and finally found happiness. The memoir is filled with numerous photographs from Thompson's life as well as many wonderful illustrations, including a chapter explaining, with both sensitivity and humor, his late-life diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome and what it means to his grandson.