The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

by Richard McRoberts

A student's guide to Mark Haddon's 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time'- a prescribed text for VCE English 2005. The novel focusses on an adolescent named Christopher who suffers from Aspergus syndrome. The story is told through Christopher's point of view and mixes several generic traditions including psychological and personal drama. The series: Cambridge Wizard Student Guides have a well earned reputation for quality in research, easy-to-understand explanations and comprehensive text coverage. Excellent background teacher resources, perfect class set material and exceptional student revision aids, Cambridge Wizard Student Guides are an invaluable tool for all teachers and students of senior English.

64 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2005

About the author

Richard McRoberts has a BA (English) from Monash University (Melbourne) and a Masters in Education (Literacy and Literature) from Melbourne University. He was a teacher for 23 years. He is a published author, with more than 100 titles to his credit. In addition to being the publisher at Wizard Books, he was the English publisher at Cambridge University Press for some years, producing some 50 books. Ziptales, set up in 2002, was his concept.

Reviews

[Brittany Starks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked reading this book because you really get into the mind of an autistic person. The book was narrated by the main character Christopher so as a reader I got to read his thoughts. You understand more what some autistic people go through. For instance in the beginning of the book Christopher talks about how he doesn’t like to be touched. I didn’t know exactly why because I wasn’t aware of his condition at first, but Christopher gets touched by the police and he actually hits him, after he hit the officer and started moaning. Right after that incident I knew for a fact that Christopher had some sort of condition. I liked how it was written because it doesn’t just come out and say what was wrong with Christopher; readers have to figure it out. I knew Christopher had autism because of the characteristics he had, like his certain obsessions with subjects, and the way he thought about things. He had an abstract mind when he thought about things. Often times Christopher would remember details easier than most people did, and that was interesting because I don’t think like that. I just notice only the obvious things unlike Christopher. I also like how the story plot was evolved. The book is like a mystery in its own way because you as a reader find out mysteries right when Christopher does. While I was reading I was trying to figure out who killed Wellington the dog, but the way it was written you find out perfectly. This book teaches readers about the life of an autistic person and it gives people a chance to understand the condition more as well as getting to know Christopher.