We’ve been wanting to shake hands with the good folks of the Schneider Family Book Award–an ALA award which highlights depictions of disability in children’s literature–for a while, and July 2014 marked the perfect time: while we celebrated our first anniversary, the Schneider celebrated its tenth!
Writing about characters with mental illness can be challenging in various ways. How do you accurately convey a character’s state of mind, without compromising on clarity or excitement? How do you show a character’s skewed perceptions of the world?
I Was Here is full of wasted potential; Meg is as much of a prop to the story as Mr. Body is to Clue.
Hanna is a character with bipolar disorder; she’s not “bipolar disorder, the walking human diagnosis.” I think people who share the disease will find something soothing in seeing someone who both manages and mismanages her illness realistically.
Queens of Geek is an authentic and refreshing portrayal of an autistic and anxious girl.
Parker Grant is a complex, flawed character whose blindness was handled realistically; a big part of her life, but not the only part of her life. This is definitely a book I will be recommending.
It’s a rare occurrence when an author can update an already published book, and even more rare when that update includes a huge overhaul of the portrayal of an autistic character. Alyssa Hillary takes a look at both the original and updated version in this review.
The description for this book uses the phrase “brilliant but autistic” to describe its main character, and that’s where our conflicted feelings about Viral Nation start.
The writing and characters are wonderful, but if you’re looking for a book about depression, I’d pass on this one.
I was intrigued by the virtual-reality premise, but this book is a veritable hotbed of misogyny and a case study in how not to write a wheelchair-using character.