Children's Books discussion

Here's a place to list books that feature a character or characters with disabilities...physical or mental disabilities.

A couple that I appreciated were Out of My Mind and Rules.

Picture Books (I have read these)

Annie and Helen
Sosu's Call
Helen's Big World: The Life of Helen Keller
Loud Emily
Thank You, Mr. Falker
The Junkyard Wonders
My Buddy
See the Ocean
We'll Paint the Octopus Red
Moses Goes to a Concert
The Secret Code
Maple Moon

Fiction/Non Fiction (I have read these)

Summer of the Monkeys
Follow My Leader
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller
Helen Keller: Rebellious Spirit
Karen
Anything But Typical

Well, it's non-fiction and a photojournalism book but I love How It Feels to Live with a Physical Disability. I love all Jill Krementz's "How It Feels" books.

was a nice blend of fantasy with a boy character who has characteristics of Autism.

One of the kids in the Baby-sitters Club is deaf. Jessi, the baby-sitter, even learned how to communicate with him using sign language. The book remains one of my favorites :)

From Anna
Listen for the Singing
Little by Little: A Writer's Education
Stars Come Out Within
Mine for Keeps
Spring Begins in March

A Different Life
Izzy, Willy-Nilly
Friend Like Zilla
Heidi
The Secret Garden
The Humming Room

Deenie
Dear Canada: To Stand On My Own: The Polio Epidemic Diary of Noreen Robertson, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1937
The Fault in Our Stars
What Katy Did
Jack and Jill
The Summer of the Swans
The Moon by Night
Mary Ingalls on Her Own
A Mango-Shaped Space
Beholding Bee

Thank you for getting this thread going again!

I was happy to get it started. But thank you especially to Gundula for all of your contributions. I've read several that you've listed, but there are many I haven't read. This is a great resource (as is this whole group.)

Jenny wrote: "I was happy to get it started. But thank you especially to Gundula for all of your contributions. I've read several that you've listed, but there are many I haven't read. This is a great resourc..."

I hope the lists come in handy. And I would also encourage group members to take a gander at the master list and general discussion thread regarding "characters with physical challenges" that we had in the picture book club a while back.

For readers interested in an academic book regarding children's literature and disability Take Up Thy Bed And Walk: Death, Disability And Cure In Classic Fiction For Girls is both interesting and worth reading (but be aware that the author does have a bit of an agenda, the book is interesting but rather one-sided and selective).

Yes, these are great suggestions, Gundula. Thanks!

We also have threads over in the Picture Book Club for books on this subject for young age group.

Ah, I see Gundula also pointed that out. Thanks again :-)

My real life book club just read books featuring characters diagnosed with Aspergers. They all had teenage main characters.

The books we read (each of us read 1 title, then we discussed the various books) were
The London Eye Mystery. (I read this...I enjoyed it and it is suitable for middle grade readers.
Colin Fischer (I also read this and really liked it.)
Mindblind (this sounds good.)
Marcelo in the Real World
The White Bicycle

Another book with a character diagnosed with Aspergers that I have read:
Mockingbird

Another series dealing with multiple physical disabilities is the Samurai Kid series by Sandy Fussell. There are 8 in the series (AU) and 4 are available in the US. It's wonderful.
White Crane (Samurai Kids, #1) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

And, of course, Wonder (R.J. Palacio) featuring a young boy with craniofacial deformity.
Also, Snicker of Magic (Natalie Lloyd) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
It features a major supporting character in a wheelchair---not the focus of the story, but present.

I second Mockingbird.
And then there's Out of My Mind.
Not to mention Anything But Typical! :)

Freak the Mighy is another outstanding book that students in grades 5 to 8 have enjoyed.

It doesn't look like it.

Here's a nifty feature you-all might not already know about.
All books that have been entered as links, as Paperboy was by Beth but not by me here, are listed over on the right rail of every group discussion page.

Scroll up, and look just under the ad. Click 'more.' Say it with me: "Wow." ;)

I like this thread. Will add two books to this impressive list of books.

Will the Real Gertrude Hollings Please Stand Up?

Child of the Silent Night: The Inspiring Story of Laura Bridgman, Both Deaf and Blind

I have as one of my bookshelves "children with special needs", but do not have a lot of books on that shelf yet. Thank you for sharing this list of books.

Lin wrote: "I like this thread. Will add two books to this impressive list of books.

Will the Real Gertrude Hollings Please Stand Up?

Child of the Silent Night: The Inspiring Story of Laura Bridgman, Both ..."

If you are interested in Laura Bridgman, there is a more recent illustrated biography, by an author who is herself blind and suffers from hearing loss (I have not read the book, but it sounds promising), She Touched the World: Laura Bridgman, Deaf-Blind Pioneer

I am thinking about adding a character that has ADD in my next book. I like the idea of different types of disabilities. I am open to any other suggestions for disabilities.

Books about a character with ADHD is Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key and Joey Pigza Loses Control.

Gundula wrote: "For readers interested in an academic book regarding children's literature and disability Take Up Thy Bed And Walk: Death, Disability And Cure In Classic Fiction For Girls is both i..."

Yes, I would recommend that book too and I thought it had a very interesting take on the way illness or disability (particularly in girl characters) is dealt with.

Bea wrote: "Gundula wrote: "For readers interested in an academic book regarding children's literature and disability Take Up Thy Bed And Walk: Death, Disability And Cure In Classic Fiction For Girls.

I enjoyed the book but still think that Lois Keith had too much of an agenda and definitely (in the modern section) ignored books and authors that did not fit in with her point of view (since she did this with one of my favourite authors, Jean Little, I noticed this rather strongly).

I'm not aware of Jean Little -thanks for the point.

Bea wrote: "I'm not aware of Jean Little -thanks for the point."

She's a Canadian children's book author (who often writes about children with disabilities; she herself has been visually impaired from birth). Her books tend to not show the challenges faced by her characters as something to be overcome, and fought against, but something to be integrated, to make use of one's abilities and challenges (I guess I feel a bit that Keith might have ignored Jean Little as her books tend to not fit in with her assessment that modern children's books about challenged characters also tend to see challenges as a problem to be overcome and combatted, but it might be true that Keith, like you, was/is not aware of the author, although I do remain a bit skeptical).

Thank you, Gundula, for the new book.

I've just started reading My Thirteenth Winter: A Memoir by Samantha Abeel. The author is a brilliant young woman with dyscalculia. I'm really impressed so far with her insight into her condition, how it affects her relationships with other people, and how it affects her understanding of herself.

Fantastic - I like the sound of that one - thank you. Especially as I think dyscalculia is so little recognised and so easily dismissed.

Charlotte wrote: "I've just started reading My Thirteenth Winter: A Memoir by Samantha Abeel. The author is a brilliant young woman with dyscalculia. I'm really impressed so far with her insight into h..."

Thanks for the link, I've always wondered whether I might not have dyscalculia (struggling to get 50 percent in math, not having to work at all to get good marks in French and other subjects). It's still a rather misunderstood condition, I've been diagnosed with NLD, but they don't want to test of dyscalculia, sigh (I'm almost 50 and I still cannot do percentages).

Me too! And there is a terrible backlash in the UK as there is a feeling that saying you are poor at maths is a kind of giggly-girly-affectation, rather than a genuine thing. So I fear girls and young women are being shamed if they have something like this, rather than supported. So will look forward to reading this book.

Bea wrote: "Me too! And there is a terrible backlash in the UK as there is a feeling that saying you are poor at maths is a kind of giggly-girly-affectation, rather than a genuine thing. So I fear girls and yo..."

But at least now, it is considered a genuine issue, same with dyspraxia and non verbal learning disability. When I was in high school in the 80s, the fact that I got 90s in French, but often got low math scores was basically just seen as laziness on my part. With me, the problem was/is also that my NLD, my clumsiness is sometimes better and sometimes worse, and with math, certain things I can do easily, others not so easily. Take that with the fact that when I was a child in Germany, we were doing this really weird pictorial math called "New Math" (Mengenlehre) that was all based on diagrams, pictures and spatial recognition (all my weak points) and then when we moved to Canada, this was no longer fashionable, you get a real recipe for disaster. I was lucky not to have to take math at university, but I still cannot do percentages, most geometry and like the girl in the description of the book, cannot figure out directions and make change quickly (and if you have impatient parents who believe that math can simply be learned and the like, yikes).

Yes, I had a similar problem at school. I am not sure it is recognised in UK schools even now, unlike dyslexia, but I will be very happy if someone corrects me on this. I now have a PhD in Creative Writing and two Masters level degrees but I would not be allowed to teach creative writing or English without a Maths GCSE. Doesn't make sense to me!

Bea wrote: "Yes, I had a similar problem at school. I am not sure it is recognised in UK schools even now, unlike dyslexia, but I will be very happy if someone corrects me on this. I now have a PhD in Creative..."

I actually think that many professionals now think that dyslexia and dyscalculia might be linked, but of course, if you don't have trouble reading, that link will probably not be explored. You are so like me, Bea. I also have a PhD in German but like you, I would never be able to teach at a high school level without math, sigh.

Nonsensical!

Bea wrote: "Nonsensical!"

Really stupid, is it not. And there is also this crazy union regulation that if you have an MA or a PhD, you MUST be paid a certain amount of money (perhaps understandable to an extent, except that what has happened is that school boards now often refuse to hire teachers with advanced degrees due to this).

Oh really? That's not the case in the UK either...those with PhDs/MAs are just as likely to be paid a miserable wage as anyone else :(

Bea wrote: "Oh really? That's not the case in the UK either...those with PhDs/MAs are just as likely to be paid a miserable wage as anyone else :("

A miserable wage is still better than no wage at all, if they won't even consider hiring you.

Yes, I think there is some of that too!

Charlotte wrote: "I've just started reading My Thirteenth Winter: A Memoir by Samantha Abeel. The author is a brilliant young woman with dyscalculia. I'm really impressed so far with her insight into h..."

What did you end up thinking of the book? I ended up not really enjoying it nearly as much as I thought I would, and it kind of bothered me on a personal level that Abeel was very much "my dyscalculia is the only true type" kind of person, for I have symptoms of dyscalculia as well but that manifest themselves quite a bit differently.

Dorothea's Eyes: Dorothea Lange Photographs the Truth, brilliant biography about a young girl with polio who ends up becoming a famous American photographer.

Another picture book biography that was published a year ago:

: The William Hoy Story: How a Deaf Baseball Player Changed the Game by Nancy Churnin

Shouldn't Six Dots , the story of Louis Braille, be on here too?

Do these count?

The Black Book of Colours by Rosana Faria - Text/Braille. Someone mentioned that the Braille isn't entirely correct.
Off to the Park by Stephen Cheetham - Has text, Braille, textures, and indents in the pages.

Lady Baldrick and the Pirate Eye is a book for young readers and shows that having a physical difference does not make you less valuable.

The War that Saved My Life-main character has a club foot and yes it's a problem to overcome but it's also tied in to her identity. Some of the Dear America books feature secondary characters with autism and other
disabilities described as "slow witted" in the time period With the Might of Angels: The Diary of Dawnie Rae Johnson, Hadley, Virginia, 1954 is a good one because her brother's "slowness" prompts Dawnie to become a doctor to figure out what's wrong with her brother and cure him.

@ManyBooks I am happy to "meet" someone else with nonverbal learning disorder. I wasn't diagnosed until I was done with school. My parents always used to give me a hard time "If you could remember your homework the way you remember TV show songs..." Now we know there's a reason for that. Math was the bane of my existence, only slightly better than gym. Algebra finally clicked when I was around 30 and studying for my graduate school exams-I taught myself. I keep thinking there's something wrong with our schools. If they had taught math and chemistry though baking, I would have done really well!

QNPoohBear wrote: "The War that Saved My Life-main character has a club foot and yes it's a problem to overcome but it's also tied in to her identity. Some of the Dear America books feature secondary ..."

I do not think I would have been able to teach myself Algebra, wow! Math and I just do not mesh and I was lucky to not have to take any kind of math at university (but one of the reasons I decided to not even bother trying to go to a US university to study German literature was precisely because I knew I would more than neither be able to pass the SAT or the GRE because of math, heck, in high school, I used to get 90s in French and not study and barely scrape by with regard to math, getting 50s, and having studied for weeks). My NLD was only diagnosed in my late 40s and I also think I might well have undiagnosed dyscalculia. Math teaching at school often does leave much to be desired, in my opinion.

I don't remember any books off hand with characters with disabilities exactly....I do remember books with sick children-not sure if that's exactly what you had in mind. Lurlene MacDaniel wrote a ton of books about sick kids-Six Months to Live was probably the most popular when I was a kid. And in the Baby-sitters Club series, Stacey has diabetes.

Currently, I am reading Chester and Gus, which deals with autism. Have read a Boy Called Bat which also deals with autism.

Have read The War That Saved My Life, and the sequel The War I Finally Won. And Theory of Hummingbirds, which deals with a young girl with a club foot

I definitely will check these books out! I run a non-profit organization, Forever Free, Inc., a therapeutic riding facility working with individuals with disabilities, helping them overcome obstacles through the way of the marvelous horse. I have had many students with autism, and I currently have a book in the works about autism also.

Have you read A Home for Sally?