Mary herself wasn\u2019t such a bad character. She resents the way her family treats her, never letting her walk around alone, not letting her go up the stairs or use scissors. The problem with her was the way she generally accepts her lot in life. She loses things and rather than trying to use her vision accepts that she\u2019ll never find them again. She questions her family but never really tries to stand up for herself. She also has no intention of learning to deal with being blind; chapter one of the book is taken up with her being miserable and hoping that one day she\u2019ll be able to see again. Although I understand those kinds of feelings \u2014 I was in that place myself and I imagine most blind children have been \u2014 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s done in a way that is useful to blind children. It sets a very low standard, implying that those feelings are right and that it\u2019s OK to never want to learn to deal with your blindness.<\/p>\n
Although Mary finally makes the decision to go outside alone, the way Wilson describes her experiences is terrible. For a start, it was initially said that Mary has some functional vision. She\u2019s a print user and although she can\u2019t see things clearly, that would indicate she has enough vision to be fairly mobile, or would use a cane if not. However, this apparently isn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n
She blundered up and down the hall, crouched over, feeling for the bag.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I can\u2019t help thinking that this description reinforces stereotypes about blindness, rather than educating people. Even the descriptions of her finding her way around are badly written and in all honesty completely unrealistic.<\/p>\n
Somehow after being kidnapped Mary manages to escape and be reunited with her family, as expected. You would think that the moral of the story would be independence and achievement \u2026 but apparently not. Mary still isn\u2019t allowed to go out alone, and more than that, she no longer wants to.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m not really sure what this book is trying to teach people. Does it show that blind children can be independent, that they can lead normal lives? I don\u2019t think it does. I hate to criticise this book so much as I have a lot of respect for Jacqueline Wilson, she\u2019s tried to tackle issues in the past that most MG\/YA authors avoid but this was so poorly executed I can\u2019t really applaud her efforts. I don\u2019t doubt that it was written with good intentions but I\u2019d discourage educators and parents from using this as a tool to teach children about disability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The only way I can describe Take a Good Look<\/em> by Jacqueline Wilson is a book designed to educate young children about visual impairment gone horribly wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_generate-full-width-content":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[58,75],"genre":[5],"age_category":[6],"disability":[68],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7351,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/7351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"age_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/age_category?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"disability","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disability?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a><\/center><\/div>The premise itself doesn\u2019t sound bad. It\u2019s very much targeted at younger children and so although the kidnapping and escape are somewhat unrealistic you can forgive that. The part that is difficult to reconcile is Wilson\u2019s incredibly unrealistic portrayal of visual impairment. Jacqueline Wilson is a very respected children\u2019s author but this time she didn\u2019t hit the mark.<\/p>\n