Disabilities in Children’s Books

The Children’s Writing Update led me to the Winter 2004 Issue of Disability Studies Quarterly, which focuses on the portrayal of disabilities in children’s books.

Since one of the fantasy stories I’ve been working on involves a diabetic protagonist, this caught my attention. I don’t know that I think of diabetes as a disability per se (though the American Diabilities Act does, I believe), but skimming through the articles, I am finding relevant things to ponder.

The first article that interested me focused on the portrayal of disabilities in science fiction and fantasy. Interestingly, the writer claims a pitfall is that many books either focus on finding a magical cure in the other world, or in finding a transformation into some other physical form that makes the disability no longer relevant.
Interesting because the one thing I knew from the start of my book was that there wouldn’t be a magical cure. I knew instinctively that this would be cheating, but it did take me a while to articulate why. Fantasy is in the end mostly metaphor for real life, rather than something outside of it; to conjure up a cure when there is none in our world would be not only cheating, but in some sense lying to the reader. If in our world this is something that has to be dealt with, then in the fantasy world of my story it needed to remain the same.

Though to my surprise, eventually the possibility of a cure was offered after all, only (and this sounds cliches without the context of the story) at a price the protagonist couldn’t/wouldn’t pay.

But to have magic as the thing that makes everything all right–I just don’t do that. Magic is what creates problems; if it also helps solve them, it’s only because it was part of the problem first.

The second article I’ve read so far focused on deaf characters in children’s picture books, but also touched on some issues involving disabilities in general. Specifically, it cited six pitfalls often found in children’s books with disabled characters:

1. Portraying the character with an impairment as “other” than human (in a positive or negative sense)
2. Portraying the character with an impairment as “extra-ordinary” (often in a stereotyped way)
3. Portraying the character as “second fiddle” to the protagonist (and often just as a vehicle to help to protagonist come to some understanding)
4. Lack of realism and accuracy in the portrayal of the impairment
5. Portraying the character as an outsider on account of the impairment
6. Failure to see the possibility of a happy ending–and a fufilled life–for the character

I suppose I’m most in danger of 2, since I do allow my character not only magical abilities, but even unusually strong ones (though again with a price attached). I think I manage to avoid it in everything but the giving of magic, though.

Hopefully I’ve done my research (and chosen my readers) well enough that accuracy isn’t an issue. And it’s the protagonist’s sibling who feels she’s playing “second fiddle”–and for the most part, her realizations come from things other than the disability.

And a happy ending–it would never occur to me that anyone couldn’t have a happy ending and a fufilled life, so long as the story supports it and it isn’t drawn out of thin air.