Are We Nearly There Yet?
Booktrust's Books and Disabilities Consultant, Alexandra Strick, discusses the challenges of depicting people with disabilities in children's books.
I should start by confessing that I have borrowed the title for this article from a research project developed recently by Eleni Burgess, a teenager I have had the pleasure of working with.
Some time ago, Eleni was awarded a Lottery Grant (in the form of a Millennium Award from the charity Whizz-Kidz) in order to research attitudes and perceptions of disability in mainstream education.
Sadly, the answer to her question has been coming back as a clear and resounding 'No'.
Society has really excelled itself in its knack of segregating disabled people over the years. Many disabled people have had little or no choice about which school to go to, how to get around or what to do with their leisure time. Indeed, they have had little choice about most aspects of their lives.
This inequality and exclusion has also been reflected in the books we read. Certainly the only two memories I have of disabled characters in any books from my own childhood appeared to be there to evoke feelings of pity and loathing respectively.
Although the situation is dramatically improving, books featuring wheelchair-using protagonists are certainly still few and far between.
The world around us (including the material we read) is structured to suit what we consider the ‘norm’. Anyone who does not fit that norm (for example, who uses a wheelchair, needs particular help/care or has communication or behavioural difficulties) is likely to be made more aware of that difference, rather than less so. They are often as a result made to feel unwelcome, awkward, undesirable and inconvenient.
Thankfully, things are changing. More and more mainstream schools and work places are accessible, and new legislation now places a duty on all education providers to ensure that they have made reasonable adjustments to include a child with a disability or special education needs within a mainstream setting.
The same is now expected of play areas, leisure centres and public parks. Plus, with medical advances and social changes, more people with mental health problems are being able to live independently instead of in institutions. However, it’s a long and gradual process.
Changes in legislation have been slow enough, but changes in attitude are even slower, so people with any kind of disability are forced to deal with preconceptions, prejudices and patronising behaviour every day.
We all still stare at someone who has difficulty communicating or controlling their limbs. We still glare if a wheelchair-user is allowed to go the front of the queue at the airport or theme park.
We still avoid talking to someone who looks strange or different if there is any way we can get out of it. At best, some of us offer our sympathy and complement disabled people on their ‘bravery’.
So, books which feature disability aren’t only important to make disabled people feel included. They are as important (perhaps more so) as tools to educate the non-disabled. They can also play a vital role in ensuring that future generations grow up without the preconceptions and discomfort described above.
We all need to play our role in actively overcoming negative images of disability, and, more than that, we need to promote positive ones.
That doesn’t mean that every single book we read should have a hero with a disability. What it means is that children’s books should encourage people to challenge the way they view others generally, and to accept (and indeed encourage and celebrate) diversity.
The fact is, a lot of children’s books do this already, but if we allow ourselves and our children to read them ‘passively’, then the vital messages are often overlooked. It is our responsibility as the adults who share books with children to give young people the right ‘prompts’ to recognise these messages, and explore and discuss honestly how we feel about the issues raised.
For example, a 'lazy' reading of Giles Andreae’s Giraffes Can’t Dance would tell a simple tale of a giraffe who isn’t very good at dancing. We can all have a laugh at him, and be grateful that we can dance (or that no one needs to know if we can’t). Perhaps the kind of questions we should be asking are 'How do you think the giraffe feels when all the animals laugh at him?' and 'Are there things that you aren’t very good at, too?'
Likewise, what sort of emotional responses do we have to Chris Riddell’s unforgettable character in Something Else? And isn’t every one of us ‘different’ in some way?
With older readers, we can ask what they think might have given people the sorts of prejudices we can see in Anthony Browne’s Voices in the Park or Robert Swindells’ Abomination? How do they think they would react if they met Spider from Dick King-Smith’s The Crowstarver? How would we feel if one of our friends underwent the facial disfiguration caused by a car accident in Benjamin Zephaniah’s Face?
How does it feel when society pressurises us to perform and conform as in William Nicholson’s The Wind Singer? The list is almost endless. Many, many books can give us a platform for such discussions and questions.
That’s not to suggest for one moment that there are enough ‘direct’ images in literature. We also desperately need more books like Stoner and Spaz and Stuck in Neutral. These are honest, hard-hitting books, which generate debate and help us to challenge the way we see someone who is disabled.
Let’s also welcome more books written by disabled writers. Books by people like Lois Keith, with positive images of wheelchair users, but also by people like June Craven (another Millennium Award Winner) who simply happens to have Cerebral Palsy. Let's make sure that writers like June get given the same opportunities as any other talented new young writer. June doesn’t write 'about' disability, as such. She writes fiction, she writes poetry and she writes about her life – her family, friends, hobbies, feelings and opinions, and her view of the world.
Her Millennium Award gave her the chance to develop her writing skills, inspire others and produce a pamphlet featuring examples of her writing. I hope that this booklet, along with the booklist and the suggestions in this article, will provide some food for thought, both inside and outside the classroom.
So are we nearly there yet? No, but at least perhaps we now have a road map and are heading in the right direction.
Note: June received her Award through Whizz-Kidz (a national charity which ran a three-year Award Scheme) but any one with a brilliant idea or a burning ambition can apply for a ‘generic’ Millennium Award by contacting unLTD.
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