Review: Dangerous by Shannon Hale
The first time I’ve really seen someone in a book who is just like me, and she turns out to be a superhero.
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Review: The Collector by Victoria Scott
Charlie Cooper is your average, down-to-earth girl—who happens to be disabled. But occasionally, this normalcy backfires.
The Trope of Curing Disability
For disabled characters, being cured is a common trope. What’s more, in most of these narratives, the characters are cured because they’re better than they were at the start of the book: kinder, gentler, braver. And finally, finally, they’re normal and whole.
Tomorrow’s Twitter Chat
This is a reminder of tomorrow’s Twitter chat.
Review: Viral Nation by Shaunta Grimes
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.
Big Changes to Disability in Kidlit
Disability in Kidlit will be undergoing some changes; a different posting schedule, update on submissions, and social media news.
Fitting in and Standing Out
I can feel their eyes on me. They’re all staring, judging.
Holiday Hiatus
Disability in Kidlit will be taking a brief two-week hiatus beginning today, but we’ll be back on January 10, 2014 with more excellent posts.
“Don’t Worry, It’s Fine When It Happens to Crazy People!”
When we see institutions in YA, we usually see them in one of two contexts: a “sane” person wrongly incarcerated in one, or a spooky (often old, sometimes abandoned but haunted by ghosts) asylum filled with “crazy people.”
Representation Matters
What concerns me is that disabled characters are often integrated in the form of tokenism, meaning one token character that could be considered “different” is included in the plot. And even then, such characters are frequently depicted in stereotypical ways, despite being created by authors who may have the best of intentions.