For this project, I researched the representation of typically marginalized groups within children’s literature, focusing on the representation of disabled individuals within the texts. As a future elementary teacher, this topic is incredibly important to me. As we have discussed ourselves in this class, literature clearly acts as a channel by which social ideals are reinforced. When regarding children’s literature specifically, the intended audience of readers are also more susceptible to these ideals than most older individuals. In addition to this, the representations children see in early literacy definitively impact their lifelong self-image as well, especially for those who may not be fairly represented. Thus, this topic is of great importance to me both because of my personal connections and because of its broader implications.
In completing research for this project, I started by looking for studies which showed disability representation of any kind in children’s literature. I then further examined the ways in which disability was represented within the literature that did include these groups (i.e. were they positive representations? Did they reinforce any specific perceptions of disability? How diverse were the representations?). To narrow my research for the purpose of this project, I primarily looked into award-winning texts such as those which have won the Caldecott and Newbery awards, as these are considered books of the highest standard. Additionally, these noteworthy books are marketed to educators as the best materials we can be using, and are resultingly often the ones which fill library and classroom bookshelves. Because of this, these award-winning books hold considerable influence over what children are being exposed to in their daily experiences with literature. Unfortunately, however, several surveys of this literature suggest that an alarming number of award-winning children’s books lack disability representation.
According to numerous articles published in the fields of disability studies and education, it is overwhelmingly clear that children’s literature lacks proper representation of disability. On the most basic level of analysis, this literature simply does not show characters or situations involving disability or disability rights. Additionally, much of the representation seen is actually reinforcing negative stereotypes of individuals with disabilities. This is seen in books where disabled characters are mere background illustrations, are entirely dependent on non-disabled characters, or simply act as a tool for non-disabled characters to use in finding personal growth, etc. These trends can be seen in both Caldecott Medal- and Newbery Award-winning children’s literature throughout the last century, as well as in miscellaneous children’s literature as a whole. Admittedly, the findings which show this largely focus on what they consider the most common forms of disability; however, the represented trends also apply to the field of disability representation as a whole. While this data is troubling, though, these studies did present the potential silver lining that these trends show a positive increase in representation over time, meaning that representation may be continuing to increase.
After completing the above research, I wanted to synthesize my findings into a more approachable presentation than a standard research paper. To do so, I decided to write my own children’s books which address these issues; the three attached books are the result of these efforts. I wrote each book with a focus on a different general field of disability: Nadiya’s New Book, Tommy’s Adventure, and Sometimes address physical disabilities, mental disabilities, and mental illnesses respectively. While the main character of Nadiya’s New Book does have specific, recognizable traits of disability (i.e. being shown in a wheelchair), each book was written to be purposefully ambiguous to an extent. My goal in writing characters which displayed somewhat vague representations of disability was to ensure that they could be relatable to many individuals with varying disabilities. For example, mental disabilities are represented primarily by what other individuals say about Tommy, such as calling him “retarded,” or by Tommy himself stating that he “thinks differently” from others; nowhere does Tommy mention any of his specific symptoms or diagnoses. As a result, I hope that a wide variety of readers could identify with the books, as opposed to only a single disability being represented in each.
In addition to including broad representation of disability in these books, I hoped to increase awareness of the lack of representation of disability in literature as a whole, as well as to reinforce general normalization of disability. In Nadiya’s New Book and Tommy’s Adventure, the characters explicitly reference the overall lack of disability representation in books. Nadiya is specifically addressing that she can’t find characters like her in her library books, while Tommy explains that people don’t read or write stories about him. While Sometimes does not explicitly address a lack of representation in literature, it normalizes mental illnesses and explains that it is okay to live with and discuss them. By bringing these topics of discussion into the content of my books, I believe I am further reinforcing positive representation of disability, in addition to simply giving disabled individuals a literary presence.
This project was ultimately a great combination of research and creativity paired with the goals of representing real needs in the world. Through my research, it became abundantly clear (as expected) that the disabled community is being represented unfairly in children’s literature. Not only is this a simple disservice to the community, but it acts to perpetuate the marginal position disabled individuals hold in society today. By synthesizing this information into the three attached books, I hope to not only increase exposure of these issues, but to combat them as well, eventually leading to a fairer representation of disability in our children’s literature.
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As a note, the aforementioned books are not attached in full to this post. Due to difficulties with scanning all of the pages, only a representative selection from each book are attached here.
