Mockingbird

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine

A fifth grade girl with Aspergers lost her brother in a school shooting. She continues to struggle with talking and behaving appropriately. She is working through her feelings and what happened to her brother. She has no real friends. Then she befriends a young boy who had lost her mother in the shooting. She struggles with relationships with other kids. She offends some by being too literal, while offending others by trying to use her coping mechanisms on them. 

With a title of "Mockingbird", I immediately associated To Kill A Mockingbird. The author did too. The girl has seen the movie and was sometimes called scout. This tied in with her brother's Eagle Scout project, with the double scout meaning. (He was building a chest that they later finished for "closure" - would building a chest really be a scout project?)

In an afterward, the author mentions the Virginia Tech shooting and early intervention for aspergers are important. It does make an interesting combination. Having the novel through the mind of the girl does seemingly make the emotions seem more "distant".