Top 25 Best Children's Books Concerning Disabilities

The list focuses on children learning about children with disabilities.

Drs. Mary Anne Prater and Tina Dyches, both faculty in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, recently celebrated their combined 25 years of research on the portrayal of people with disabilities in children's literature by publishing both a book and an article on this topic.

Prater and Dyches recently completed Using Children's Literature to Teach About Disabilities, published by Libraries, Unlimited, and "Books that Portray Characters with Disabilities-A Top 25 List for Children and Young Adults" in the journal TEACHING Exceptional Children. Both publications highlight the increasing portrayal in children's literature of characters with disabilities. The main purpose of the book is to supply resources and instruction to parents, teachers, and librarians to help them select appropriate portrayals of disabilities in children's literature and use this literature to teach children about persons with disabilities.

The book includes many resources to help adults and children extract meaning out of books portraying individuals with disabilities. "We have included a lot of what we call 'reproducibles,' so that teachers can simply photocopy worksheets and other instructional materials," Prater stated. "They can use them with any book, although a few are designed for specific books."

The article has a similar emphasis. Prater and Dyches compiled a list of 25 children's books that feature a character with a disability. "We have examined how characters who have disabilities are portrayed in children's literature by looking at illustrative quality, literary quality, and characterization of the person with a disability. We want characters who are integrated well with people without disabilities; we don't want the disability to necessarily be the major focus of the story." They say that ideally the character "just happens to be somebody with a disability who is going through life just like the rest of us." They prefer that the disability not have a major impact on the plot.

The fact that totaling their years of work on the topic equals 25 prompted the title Prater and Dyches chose for their article: "Books that Portray Characters with Disabilities-A Top 25 List for Children and Young Adults." Noting the correlation, Prater said, "That's one of the reasons we created our top 25 list. We thought it was about time."

In the past, according to Prater, few children's books featured characters with disabilities. However, recently authors are recognizing the need for such characters. "It is becoming more common because people are giving more attention to areas of disability," Prater explained. "People are writing books with the intention of including somebody with a disability."

Children's literature is not a new interest for Prater. "This is something that I have enjoyed ever since I was working on my special education licensure," she said. She explained that when she as in college working towards a special education degree, she took a literature class and fell in love with children's books. She even found a part-time job in the Salt Lake City Public Library Children's Room. She continued, "Then, after being a professor for six or seven years, I thought, "why don't I go back to my love for children's literature and use it as a way to do some research?'" Building on this area of personal enthusiasm has led to many publications and presentations that have been important in her career.

4 April 2008