Publisher's promotional mobile for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

London: Jonathan Cape, 2003. Mobile produced by publisher Jonathan Cape to promote Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), one of the first contemporary novels to feature an autistic narrator. Marketed to both adults and children, the novel won the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, was long-listed for The Booker Prize, and inspired a successful West End and Broadway stage adaptation. Haddon’s teenage narrator Christopher keeps a careful count of the cars his school bus passes each morning, and conducts himself accordingly: “4 red cars in a row made it a Good Day, and 3 red cars in a row made it a Quite Good Day, and 5 red cars in a row made it a Super Good Day, and . . . 4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks.” The mobile features two red cars, and one car each colored blue, black, and yellow, signifying neither a Good Day nor a Black Day in Christopher's system. A scarce piece of paper-engineered publishing ephemera that attempts to represent neurodiversity visually. Flat-packed cardboard mobile, featuring a color-printed title placard connected to a crossbar with five suspended color-printed cutout cars, measuring 21 inches long from top of placard to lower car. (Inventory #: 1004001)