![]() | The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject.(December 2020) |
The representation of disability in children's literature is a matter of scholarly research, and has been a relevant subject particularly since the 1970s. [1] However, disability representation is still a modern issue. A 2011 World Report on Disability conducted by the World Health Organization found that around 15% of the global population, 1 billion people, have a disability, [2] yet in 2019 only 3.4% of children's books had disabled main characters. [3] The quality of disability representation can vary depending on the specific disability portrayed. [4] Even though society has included more diverse characters with disabilities, this representation must be handled with care to avoid promoting existing negative stereotypes. [4]
Professor Ian Davidson and colleagues analyzed the depiction of disabled characters in a collection of 19th children's literature from the Toronto Public Library. [5] The researchers found certain common characteristics of disability representation in 19th-century children's literature: disabled characters rarely appeared as individuals, but are usually depicted as impersonal groups and reduced to five oversimplified categories: the diseased or extremely sick, the "crippled" and "deformed", the blind, the "deaf" or "mute", and the broad category of the "insane" or 'mad". [5] The language used to describe disabled characters was often patronizing or offensive, and disabled characters were often made to suffer and were poorly treated by other characters. [5]
Oxford Professor Ann Dowker describes how in many 19th-century books, disability representation was often vague and unclear. [6] This lack of description results in a highly inaccurate depiction of disability that was based heavily on stereotypes. [6] Disability representation was also often tied to moral character. [6] For example, in What Katy Did (1872), the main character Katy's disability is depicted as an opportunity presented by God to experience the "School of Pain" through which she will learn important moral lessons. [6] Other disabled characters, such as Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol (1843), were depicted as saintly and pure. [6]
Hans Christian Andersen's work present the opportunity to explore disability representation in 19th-century fairy tales. [7] Dr. Vivian Yenika-Agbaw found that in these fairy tales, the relationship between disabled and non-disabled characters was defined by power imbalances. [7] She argues that these relationships reinforced existing societal hierarchies. [7] In four of Andersen's fairy tales—The Little Mermaid (1837), The Brave Tin Soldier, also known as The Steadfast Tin Soldier (1838), Little Tiny or Thumbelina (1835), and The Ugly Duckling (1843)—the character's place in the social hierarchy was determined by their disability. [7] In all of these examples the disabled character was portrayed as "other" and at the bottom of the social hierarchy. [7]
Though these problematic themes were common, not all disability representation in 19th-century children's literature was harmful. [8] Dowker identifies a few examples in 19th-century literature in which the disabled characters were not helpless or saintly. [8] The Pillars of the House (1873), The Clever Woman of the Family (1865), and The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's (1887) contain multidimensional disabled characters. [8]
The majority of 19th century disability representation reduced disabled characters to the "other" while preaching messages of obedience to God's will and moral lessons taught through suffering. [9] [8]
In the United States, about 26% of the population has a disability, slightly higher than the 17% worldwide figure. [10] [11] In 2019 only 3.4% of children's books published in the US had disabled main characters, [12] Having children read about characters with disabilities, scholars suggest, helps promote acceptance and empathy. [13] The approach of children and youth literature (collectively called "juvenile literature") can have a significant impact on the children reading it, whether they personally have experienced disability or not; literature "has proven to be an agent capable of influencing attitudes and acceptance of impairments". [14] Stereotypes of disabilities could also have an impact on children, this may cause children to misunderstand and view disabilities in a negative way. [13] In "The Ethical Responsibility of Representing Disability in Children's Literature," Anna Purkiss describes how "the way disability is represented in children's literature has the potential to affect non-disabled young readers' views of disabled people in real life and also to reflect disabled readers' lived experiences back to them from the page." [15]
Perhaps no group has been as overlooked and inaccurately represented in children's books as individuals with disabilities. Most often they were not included in stories and when they were, many negative stereotypes prevailed, such as characters who were pitiful or pathetic, evil or superheroes, or a burden and incapable of fully participating in the events of everyday life. Often the difference or disability was the main personality trait emphasized to the reader, not a balance of strengths and weaknesses. Blaska, 1996. [16] : 69
From 1940 to 1970, around 311 books for children were published in the United States that included characters with disabilities as main characters. Some of these books romanticized the disability, some were infantilized, while others portrayed the disabled characters as avoiding the world. [16] : 69–70 Such portrayals did not reflect lived reality; an oddity is that the portrayal of blind individuals exceeded their actual numbers in the real population. [16] : 69–70 Blindness was noted as being the most common disability among African-American characters in children's fiction, used as a plot device to represent the ability to see beyond racial prejudices, [17] making the disability secondary to its significance as a plot device.
In 1986, the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) was put into force in the United States, which ended the exclusion of children with disabilities from publicly funded school systems. With the integration of children with disabilities into public schools, a new interest arose in representing disabled people in children's books. Barbara Holland Baskin and Karen H. Harris conducted influential research into the portrayal of disability in children and youth literature in the late 1970s. They published the seminal study Notes from a Different Drummer (1977), followed by More Notes from a Different Drummer (1984). Today, disability in juvenile literature is a standard topic included in bibliographies, research, criticism, and review sources. Several bibliographies and studies reviewing fiction and non-fiction have been produced in the years since.[ citation needed ]
The evolution of the portrayal of disability can be seen in the books written since the 1970s. Judy Blume shows the experience of a teenage girl diagnosed with idiopathic scoliosis in Deenie (1973). The protagonist, Deenie, faces the challenges brought by having to wear a body brace during her treatment, which impacts her perceptions of herself and those of her family and fellow students. Deenie does not overcome the disability by the end of the story, nor is she defeated by it; the conclusion more realistically shows her continuing to face challenges and learning to adjust to them.
A trend in current juvenile fiction is the portrayal of characters with "hidden disabilities" that have become more common diagnoses in recent decades. Examples include Petra Mathers' Sophie and Lou (1991), about extreme shyness that is an emotional and social disability, and Caroline Janover's The Worst Speller in Jr. High (1995) about a boy with dyslexia. In fiction for older youth, disability has recently been dealt with in complex situations with nuanced techniques such as multiple-perspective narrative; an example is Erika Tamar's Fair Game (1993), about a group of male students who repeatedly sexually assault an intellectually disabled girl at their school. [18]
Bibliographer Debra Robertson, who wrote Portraying Persons with Disabilities: An Annotated Bibliography of Fiction for Children and Teenagers (1992), pointed out in the early 1990s that not every disability has to be a "metaphor for a protagonist's development", and the tendency of writers to romanticize or stigmatize medical conditions in this way is a persistent problem in juvenile literature. [16] : 69–71
More recent studies have indicated that educators may improve student understanding of disability with "follow-up discussion or activities and stories that portray characters with disabilities accurately, realistically, and positively". [16] : 73
Researchers from the University of Prešov completed a research project focused on human disadvantage in book production for children and young people (original and translated literature from the mid-19th century to 2020). The results showed the historical variability of literary and artistic creative approaches to depicting the topic. [19]
Every two years, the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) published a list of books for and about young people with disabilities. [20]
Representation of disabled characters in literature has come a long way over the years but continued uses of stereotypes and misleading representations have a harmful effect on readers. When done correctly disabled characters can be used to aid in conversations about the disabled and what they experience in everyday life. [21]
Professors Alicia Rieger and Ewa McGrail discuss how authentic disability representation portrays disability as a part of the character, rather than making it their entire identity. [22] Monica Kleekamp and Angie Zapata, in a 2019 article in The Reading Teacher, introduce four features of positive representation in children's literature, which include presenting characters with a disability as multidimensional, having their voices tell the story, position readers to not take disabled characters for granted, and have such characters have authentic relationships. [23]
When authors write books with characters who have disabilities as the main characters, they have a responsibility to write books that are "accurate and authentic" to the experiences of disabled people. [15]
Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader, from picture books for the very young to young adult fiction.
The Hans Christian Andersen Awards are two literary awards given by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), recognising one living author and one living illustrator for their "lasting contribution to children's literature". The writing award was first given in 1956, the illustration award in 1966. The former is sometimes called the "Nobel Prize for children's literature".
A mammy is a U.S. historical stereotype depicting black women, usually enslaved, who did domestic work, including nursing children. The fictionalized mammy character is often visualized as a dark-skinned woman with a motherly personality. The origin of the mammy figure stereotype is rooted in the history of slavery in the United States, as slave women were often tasked with domestic and childcare work in American slave-holding households. The mammy caricature was used to create a narrative of black women being happy within slavery or within a role of servitude. The mammy stereotype associates black women with domestic roles and it has been argued that it, combined with segregation and discrimination, limited job opportunities for black women during the Jim Crow era, approximately 1877 to 1966.
Stereotypes of African Americans are misleading beliefs about the culture of people with partial or total ancestry from any black racial groups of Africa whose ancestors resided in the United States since before 1865, largely connected to the racism and the discrimination to which African Americans are subjected. These beliefs date back to the slavery of black people during the colonial era and they have evolved within American society.
Latter Day Saints and Mormons have been portrayed in popular media many times. These portrayals often emphasize controversial subjects from the history and beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other branches of the Latter Day Saint movement.
Susanne Julia Gervay is an Australian author. Her younger fiction in the I Am Jack series are rites-of-passage books focusing on school bullying reaching adults and children. The first instalment has been adapted into a play by the award-winning Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People. I Am Jack is the first of four books including Super Jack, Always Jack and Being Jack. Her powerful realistic young adult literature includes Butterflies, The Cave and That's Why I Wrote This Song which is a collaborative work with her teenage daughter Tory who wrote and sings the songs that are part of the book and downloadable from her website.
The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler is a children's school adventure novel by Gene Kemp, first published by Faber and Faber in 1977 with illustrations by Carolyn Dinan. It is set at Cricklepit Combined School, a fictional primary school based on St Sidwell's School in Exeter where Kemp worked as a teacher from 1963 to 1979. The book inaugurated a series of further stories by Kemp set at the same school. Tyke Tiler follows the final term of Tyke, an adventurous twelve-year-old, at Cricklepit Combined School. After Tyke's best friend Danny gets into various scrapes, Tyke has to protect and stick up for him despite Danny being misunderstood by teachers and other students.
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games. The publishing industry divides fiction into adult fiction, young adult fiction, new adult fiction, and children's fiction.
Stereotypes of Jews are generalized representations of Jews, often caricatured and of a prejudiced and antisemitic nature.
The depiction of disability in the media plays a major role in molding the public perception of disability. Perceptions portrayed in the media directly influence the way people with disabilities are treated in current society. "[Media platforms] have been cited as a key site for the reinforcement of negative images and ideas in regard to people with disabilities."
Ableism is discrimination and social prejudice against people with physical or mental disabilities. Ableism characterizes people as they are defined by their disabilities and it also classifies disabled people as people who are inferior to non-disabled people. On this basis, people are assigned or denied certain perceived abilities, skills, or character orientations.
Stereotypes of Jews in literature have evolved over the centuries. According to Louis Harap, nearly all European writers prior to the twentieth century projected the Jewish stereotypes in their works. Harap cites Gotthold Lessing's Nathan the Wise (1779) as the first time that Jews were portrayed in the arts as "human beings, with human possibilities and characteristics." Harap writes that, the persistence of the Jewish stereotype over the centuries suggests to some that "the treatment of the Jew in literature was completely static and was essentially unaffected by the changes in the Jewish situation in society as that society itself changed." He contrasts the opposing views presented in the two most comprehensive studies of the Jew in English literature, one by Montagu Frank Modder and the other by Edgar Rosenberg. Modder asserts that writers invariably "reflect the attitude of contemporary society in their presentation of the Jewish character, and that the portrayal changes with the economic and social changes of each decade." In opposition to Modder's "historical rationale", Rosenberg warns that such a perspective "is apt to slight the massive durability of a stereotype". Harap suggests that the recurrence of the Jewish stereotype in literature is itself one indicator of the continued presence of anti-Semitism among the readers of that literature.
Fairy tale parody is a genre of fiction that parodies traditional fairy tales. The parodies are often created as new literary stories, movies, or television shows.
Feminist children's literature is the writing of children's literature through a feminist lens. Children's literature and women's literature have many similarities. Both often deal with being seen as weak and placed towards the bottom of a hierarchy. In this way feminist ideas are regularly found in the structure of children's literature. Feminist criticism of children's literature is therefore expected, since it is a type of feminist literature. Feminist children's literature has played a critical role for the feminist movement, especially in the past half century. In her book Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, bell hooks states her belief that all types of media, including writing and children's books, need to promote feminist ideals. She argues "Children's literature is one of the most crucial sites for feminist education for critical consciousness precisely because beliefs and identities are still being formed". The cover of hooks' book, drawn by Laura DeSantis, depicts children alongside adults, showing the importance of the youth. The presence of feminism in children's literature has evolved over the years, but the overall message and goals have remained consistent.
Theatre and disability is a subject focusing on the inclusion of disability within a theatrical experience, enabling cultural and aesthetic diversity in the arts. Showing disabled bodies on stage can be to some extent understood as a political aesthetic as it challenges the predominately abled audience's expectations as well as traditional theatre conventions. However, the performance of disabilities on stage has raised polarizing debates about whether the performers are exposed and reduced to their disability or whether they have full agency of who they are and what they represent.
The intersection of disability and religion concerns the manner in which disabled people are treated within religious communities, the religious texts of those religions, or the general input from religious discourse on matters relating to disability. Studies on the relationship between religion and disability vary widely, with some postulating the existence of ableism and others viewing religion as a primary medium through which to assist disabled people. Religious exhortation often prompts adherents to treat people with disabilities with deference, however when the disability constitutes a mental illness such an approach may be slanted with an acknowledgement of the latter's naivete. In religions with an eschatological belief in divine judgment, there are often traditions promulgating an exemption from judgement in the afterlife for mentally disabled people, as well as for children who die before reaching maturity due to both lacking an understanding of their actions in a manner analogous to the insanity defense. Regarding the rationale behind God's creation of disabled people, some religions maintain that their contrast with the non-disabled permits the non-disabled to reflect and God to subsequently assess the level of gratitude shown by each individual for their health.
Young adult fiction and children's literature in general have historically shown a lack of diversity, that is, a lack of books with a main character who is, for example, a person of color, from the LGBTQIA+ community, or disabled. The numbers of children's book authors have shown a similar lack of diversity. Diversity is considered beneficial since it encourages children of diverse backgrounds to read and it teaches children of all backgrounds an accurate view of the world around them. In the mid-2010s, more attention was drawn to this problem from various quarters. In the several years following, diversity numbers seem to have improved: One survey showed that in 2017, a quarter of children's books were about minority protagonists, almost a 10 percent increase from 2016.
Baek Hee-na is a South Korean author of picture books, an illustrator and animator. She writes picture books with characters that have distinct personalities and with charming storytelling based on various illustration production experiences. Her representative work, Magic Candies, was selected as a recommended work and included on the IBBY Honour List in 2018 and produced as a musical in South Korea. Baek is the first South Korean to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) in 2020. Her picture books have been translated and published in several languages, including English, German, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish and Norwegian.
Horror films have frequently featured disability, dating to the genre's earliest origins in the 1930s. Various disabilities have been used in the genre to create or augment horror in audiences, which has attracted commentary from some critics and disability activists.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)