Exceptionalities in Children's Books

After last week’s discussion on diversity in children’s books, I went home to try and find any that I had read as a child. I was particularly interested in books about children with disabilities, since these are few and far between. I came across The Handstand, by Barry Rudner, which I remember reading a lot when I was younger. This picture book is about a young boy who is excluded from a club because he cannot do a handstand. He meets a new friend “in the seat with four wheels” (p. 8) who, in an unexpected twist, teaches him how to win the handstand contest. Looking back at this book after our class discussion, I realized that although it does include a character with a disability, it also emphasizes the conventional lesson of acceptance. The end of the book stresses the fact that the boy has learned that his new wheelchair-bound friend is “nothing less than you and I” (p. 23). While this is a lesson that all children need to learn, there should be more books that convey the topic in a less obvious way. The books that really stand out are those that do not force the reader to think about the characters’ disabilities.