
Much Ado About ADD
ADD isn’t an end of the world big deal. It’s really, really not. But it is a deal, it’s a thing. It’s a disability. It puts you on a different default setting.
ADD isn’t an end of the world big deal. It’s really, really not. But it is a deal, it’s a thing. It’s a disability. It puts you on a different default setting.
In terms of disabled characters, what would our contributors like to see more of in children’s literature?
Eric Lindstrom wrote an excellent portrayal of a blind teenage girl, so we’re happy to invite him to the site to discuss his approach, blindness tropes, and more.
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.
Portrayals of scoliosis in fiction often lack realism. Why is there so little reflection on the factors that affect a person’s journey?
A one-armed astronaut superhero is the lead in Dangerous, the unusual new novel by NYT bestselling and Newbery Honor-winning author Shannon Hale, who sat down with us for a great interview.
What is it like to grow up with dyscalculia? And how might a character experience it?
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.
You Look Different in Real Life is a contemporary YA novel in which the broken friendship between the protagonist and her autistic best friend plays a central role–a thoughtfully handled plot thread that we were eager to talk to author Jennifer Castle about.
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!