awards birth_date spouse article_title name occupation
authors award ' and celebrities ' award of excellence irwin 1948 david katz illana katz
 illana katz author
illana katz

illana katz -lrb- born 1948 -rrb- is an author , lecturer , and founder of real life storybooks , a publisher of special needs storybooks for children .
motivated by the late 1980s news that her son seth had autism , katz began to educate herself about autism , including researching into the life of theoretical physicist albert einstein .
after writing `` joey and sam : a heartwarming storybook about autism , a family , and a brother 's love '' in 1993 , circumstances led katz to write `` sarah '' , a 1994 book about child molestation .
by 1995 katz and her collaborator , ucla professor dr. edward ritvo , had gathered enough material to write their 1995 book , `` in a world of his own : a storybook about albert einstein '' , in which they concluded that einstein did have autism .
katz continues to work in the special needs profession .
