Lauren Peveril is a full-time undergraduate student at Mount Allison University but can now also be called a first-time author. Her children’s book, “Lily’s Magical Mind,” follows a little girl exploring her surroundings and discovering her differences. “She starts out as a young toddler. She doesn’t like the sand, and she kind of struggles with a few things, and then she gets diagnosed with autism,” says Peveril. In many ways, Lily’s life reflects Peveril’s own experience with autism. “I was diagnosed at 18, as an adult, and that came with a lot of relief. But also, being diagnosed as a late female, I definitely masked growing up. I always knew there was something going on, but we could never figure it out,” she says. Her mother, Michele Peveril, says she started researching autism and questioning her own journey. “I think she was really able to almost diagnose herself and then realize that this explained a number of her personality traits and things that she had experienced over time,” she says. The book started out as a school assignment and blossomed into much more. From Ted Talks to classroom presentations, Peveril is busy helping children better understand autism. “I’ve had so many kids come up after those and say, ‘I have autism or my brother does or my sister does,’ and they say ‘that sounds so much like me,’” says Peveril. “I didn’t have a resource like this or anyone to look up to who was a female with autism. It was nice to have a resource that I could look to (and know) younger me would have benefited from having something like that.” The book was also inspired by Peveril’s brother who lives with ADHD. “I think the book is a good tool for parents too, because it gives you kind of a plain language child’s view of what’s going on in their mind that they don’t always say out loud, and that was definitely the case with Lauren,” says her mother. When people read her book, Peveril hopes they take away an understanding that autism isn’t something to be scared of. “People have a lot of misconceptions about it, and I think it’s a great resource for kids with or without autism to understand their classmates better, understand themselves better, and how we can be more inclusive.” For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
