Friday, October 17, 2014

Where are all the disabled characters in children's books?



Malorie Blackman and Megan
Megan TheBook AddictedGirl with Malorie Blackman at YALC 2014 after resisting dressing up as Professor Xavier from X-Men. Photograph: Emily Drabble
My name’s Megan. I’m a teenager, a book blogger, a book addict, an aspiring author and a now-too-old member of this site (sad face). Oh, and I also happen to be in a wheelchair.

Sorry for that little introduction, but I just wanted to point out how being in a wheelchair doesn’t define me. And I want people like that in books too: I want normal characters in normal situations, who are either wheelchair-users or cane-users or whatever – I’m really not fussy. I just want those with physical disabilities to be more visible in children’s and teen fiction.

You see, being a book blogger, I like to look for diversity in what I read. I also like to relate with the protagonist. And after four years of blogging, I’ve yet to read a book with a physically disabled lead character. This makes me a little annoyed, because this could quite easily make people like me, teens in wheelchairs, feel like we aren’t the (admittedly somewhat insultingly named) “norm”, that we’re different and not quite right. And everyone knows it’s wrong to make people feel like that.
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