BONDY, Andy

(Andrew S. Bondy)

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Earned Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—Pyramid Educational Consultants, Inc., 226 W. Park Pl., Ste. 1, Newark, DE 19711. E-mail—abondy@pecs.com.

CAREER: Delaware Autistic Program, director for twelve years; teacher of university-level courses; Pyramid Educational Consultants, Newark, DE, cofounder.

WRITINGS:

(With Lori Frost) A Picture's Worth: PECS and Other Visual Communication Strategies in Autism, Woodbine House (Bethesda, MD), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Andy Bondy is cofounder of Pyramid Educational Consultants, Inc., the focus of which is providing information and help to caregivers of autistic children and adults. Bondy has served as director of the Delaware Autistic Program and has conducted workshops and taught courses to specialists and teachers on the subjects of curriculum design, instruction, communications, and behavior analysis. An outgrowth of Bondy's organization was the Picture Exchange Communications System, or PECS, developed during the 1990s, and which he explains in A Picture's Worth: PECS and Other Visual Communication Strategies in Autism.

Coauthored with Lori Frost, A Picture's Worth is written primarily for parents and other nonprofessionals, and emphasizes that communication is not limited exclusively to speech. Rather than requiring that particular levels of skills be reached in order to implement the system, the PECS program instead draws on applied behavior analysis as a first step to communication, which begins by using pictures, words, and symbols, usually on cards. Each chapter begins with an example of the sort of situation families with an autistic member often must grapple.

Linda Grossman noted the authors' "easy flowing style" in a review of the book for the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics and added that "there are excellent references of scientific articles and book publications outlined at the end of each chapter as well." The book contains a resource list, including Web sites and contact information for related organizations. Grossman concluded by saying that "overall, this is a lucid, informative guide. It serves as a useful introduction for further exploration into the world of communicative deficits and strategies to overcome them."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, August, 2002, Linda Grossman, review of A Picture's Worth: PECS and Other Visual Communication Strategies in Autism, p. 283.

Library Journal, April 1, 2002, Corey Seeman, review of A Picture's Worth, p. 132.

ONLINE

Pyramid Educational Consultants, Inc. Web site, http://www.pecs.com/ (June 1, 2005), "Andrew S. Bondy, Ph.D."