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Review: Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
Everything, Everything starts out as a respectful, sensitive narrative with incredibly likable characters, but ends on a shockingly disappointing note in terms of disability representation.
Everything, Everything starts out as a respectful, sensitive narrative with incredibly likable characters, but ends on a shockingly disappointing note in terms of disability representation.
Tommy Smythe disappears one Friday night, and even after weeks of searching he can’t be found. This is the story of a rural community’s search for Tommy, and the complicated social networks created by wrongdoings and secrets in a small town.
While Call’s disability informs his character, it’s hardly the focus of the story, and I appreciated that. What I liked even more was the way Black and Clare treated Call’s disability when they did mention it.
The most common wheelchair-using character has acquired paraplegia, but why is this particular narrative so prevalent, and at the expense of all others?
When characters with disabilities are portrayed as inspirational or overcoming obstacles just for living their daily lives, it sends a message that a life with a disability is a burden. What message does that send to young people?
After the first two books in Jackie Morse Kessler’s Riders of the Apocalypse series—Hunger, about a girl with anorexia, and Rage, about a girl with depression—were so positively reviewed on the blog, we were incredibly excited to invite the author over for a joint interview.
I can’t tell you how many times people have been dismissive or incredulous about my mental illness, simply because I don’t fulfill their preconceived notions about bipolar individuals.
A princess with a clubfoot. Who can resist? We can’t, and apparently the Schneider Family Book Award jury couldn’t, either. Merrie Haskell’s 2014 win of the award was just one of the reasons we wanted to discuss her MG fantasy novel Handbook for Dragon Slayers with her.
These magical or futuristic “fixes” seem rooted in a discomfort with disability: many writers cannot (or don’t want to) imagine a life without sight and therefore create excuses to give their character equivalent sighted experiences.
We take a moment to look back at our favorite posts and reads of the year, and to look ahead to the substantial changes 2017 will bring at Disability in Kidlit.