To Siri with Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines

Judith Newman’s To Siri with Love is a collection of touching, hilarious, and illuminating stories about life with her autistic thirteen-year-old son.

A New York Times Notable Book

When Judith Newman shared the story of how Apple’s electronic personal assistant, Siri, helped her autistic son Gus, through her viral New York Times op-ed column, she received widespread media attention and an outpouring of affection from readers around the world. Basking in the afterglow of media attention, Gus told anyone who would listen, “I’m a movie star.”

Judith’s story of her son and his bond with Siri was an unusual tribute to technology. While many worry that our electronic gadgets are dumbing us down, she revealed how they can give voice to others, including children with autism like Gus—a boy who has trouble looking people in the eye, hops when he’s happy, and connects with inanimate objects on an empathetic level.

From the charming (Gus weeping with sympathy over the buses that would lie unused during a drivers’ strike) to the painful (paying $22,000 for a behaviorist in Manhattan to teach Gus to use a urinal) to the humorous (Gus’s insistence on getting naked during all meals, whether at home or not, because he does not want to get his clothes dirty) to the profound (how an automated “assistant” helped a boy learn how to communicate with the rest of the world), the stories in To Siri with Love open our eyes to the magic and challenges of a life beyond the ordinary.