Like No Other Boy by Larry Center is an emotional, heart wrenching, insightful, and heart warming book. Tommy is an eight year old boy with autism. His parents would do anything for their child to help him. The problem is that they have different opinions on how to do this. Tom-Tom's parents, are divorced and he lives with his mother during the week and with his dad on the weekends. To say that Chris and Cheryl's relationship is strained is putting it mildly. One Saturday, his father takes him to the San Diego Zoo and when they are viewing the chimpanzees, Chris notices that his son is somehow communicating with the chimps. At first he can't believe this but others that are around are noticing the same thing. When he tells Cheryl she thinks he is insane.
Chris finds a program that is studying chimpanzees and their communication with humans. He brings Tommy to this place and the doctors there are astounded at Tommy's interaction with the primates.
The relationship of divorced parents, between father and son, Tommy and the chimps is so real and moving. The situations of dealing with court proceedings on the custody of Tommy, dealing with an aging parent, dealing with the real heartbreak of having a child with autism and their idiosyncrasys, trying to find employment, and most of all doing what your gut is telling you is the best situation for your son is told with such heartfelt emotion. ( )