Interview with Melissa Shang about Mia Lee is Wheeling Through Middle School
Kayla Whaley talks with thirteen-year-old activist and author Melissa Shang about her recent middle grade debut.
Kayla Whaley talks with thirteen-year-old activist and author Melissa Shang about her recent middle grade debut.
Although the book was fun and interesting in places, the disability aspect was very much a freak-show presentation of disability and the disabled experience.
When we talk about disability and sci-fi/fantasy, the first thing many will think of is the magical disability trope. But what does this trope entail and imply? And how can you subvert it?
Our reviewers interview author and Disability in Kidlit editor Corinne Duyvis about disability tropes, survival in the apocalypse, and writerly research.
Today we get most forms of entertainment at the push of a button, so we tend to hate having to wait. The situation is even worse if you can’t read print—resulting in an endless waiting game for blind readers.
What’s missing here is not any aspect of how the autistic character is depicted, per se—what’s missing is something subtler in the narrator’s depiction, and in her point of view.
The portrayal of epilepsy in this book was frustrating and disrespectful. People with epilepsy deserve better than this.
This book definitely had its creepy moments, but I think other books have taken the protective older brother trope and did it better—without turning the younger brother into a plot device.
Although I was underwhelmed by the portrayal of albinism in Akata Witch, it’s a great novel that features the first strong, sympathetic lead with albinism I’ve seen in quite a few years.
The Mara Dyer trilogy remains one of the best fictional depictions of PTSD that I have come across. That just makes it more disappointing when the series badly misses the mark on other issues.