After reading this I had to do a little check... and I was right. Rose the author and illustrator is autistic herself.

I know this shouldn't necessarily matter, but as someone who is autistic and partially verbal myself, I like to look into whether the books that represent neurodivergencies are own voice or not (although even then we can't always know for sure or expect to have this information publicly disclosed).

I haven't seen a picture book before that represents AAC (alternative augmentative communication).
I've seen children sometimes be encouraged to use flashcards and other tools in schools, although this is still majorly discouraged in favour of speech therapy, but I've never seen it represented in a story. I really hope this is something I begin to see more of.

As someone who was late diagnosed, I struggle with allowing myself to use AAC. There is a societal understanding that speaking is normal, and anything else is weird, time consuming, or irritating.

I'm glad to see an uptake of understanding the sensory reactions and needs of autistic children, especially in books, but I really hope more books like this, representing other traits of neurodivergent children (and adults) become more mainstream/commonplace.
It's not perfect (the typical animals instead of people, it's a little oversimplified for my liking) but considering I've not seen this before, I'm very happy with it.

This will be going in my all-times-favourites folder even without a 5 star review exactly for these reasons.