Disability Acceptance Month: Book List

The list below, compiled by our Equity & Inclusion Committee of parents and staff members, is split into Early Childhood, Young Readers and Older Kids/Young Adult. There are a wide range of books designed to teach children to be empathetic, inclusive, and accepting of all types of people.

Early Childhood

What Happened to You? by James Catchpole and Karen George

• Talks about how disabled kids just want to be treated and played with like other kids, and do not want nosy questions!

Mama Zooms by Jane Cowen-Fletcher

• About life with a disabled mother

My Travelin’ Eye by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw

• About a young girl whose lazy eye lets her see the world a special way

Can Bears Ski? by Raymond Antrobus and Polly Dunbar

• About a deaf bear who can do many things!

I See Things Differently by Thomas Pat

• A first glimpse at autism

Young Readers

We Move Together by Kelly Fritsch & Anne McGuire

• A celebration of disability culture and community

Rescue & Jessica by Jessica Kensky

• Based on a true story about a disabled woman and her service dog

How I Learn by Brenda Miles

• Introduces the concept of learning disabilities and how it affects one boy at school

A Kids Book about Disabilities by Kristine Napper

• A straightforward, simple explanation about disabilities

When Charley Met Emma by Amy Web

• About a boy befriending a physically disabled girl

Awesomely Emma by Amy Web

• About a girl with limb differences who uses a wheelchair

You are Enough by Margaret O’Hair

• About inclusion and diversity, inspired by a real girl with Down’s Syndrome

The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin by Julia Finley Mosca

• A biography of autistic science Dr. Temple Grandin

I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott

• About a boy who speaks with a stutter learning to accept himself

All My Stripes by Shaina Rudolph

• About a zebra with autism navigating the world

Older Kids/Young Adult

Rolling Hero: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Rebel Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution by Judith Heumann

• The young adult version of disability advocate Judy Heumann’s autobiography

El Deafo by Cece Bell

• A graphic memoir of a deaf girl

I am Not a Label by Cerrie Burnell

• Biographies of disabled artists, advocates, and athletes

Not So Different by Shane Burcaw

• An autobiography that answers many every day questions people have about living with a disability

The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida

• A young adult/adult autobiography of a non-vocal autistic boy

Time Well Spent

What’s the opposite of wasting time? We often talk about time in the same terms as money, referring to moments like finishing emails as well spent. Those feelings of completion are important. With a new school year on the horizon, we get glimpses of how fast children are growing, insights that escape our everyday awareness of time.

Tuning into the passage of time can spur us to think about how to use even small amounts of time with children more consciously. Rather than feeling like we have to do more, fully immersing ourselves predictable times with them is the opposite of wasting time: it’s an investment. Another term for those intentional experiences is quality time.

Last year one of our first grade teachers wanted to help a student who was having a hard time self-regulating in class. The teacher set up five minutes twice a day every day to give the child her undivided attention. Knowing she would have that one-on-one focus with the teacher calmed the child, and over time she didn’t need it anymore.

Again and again, we see that predictable time alone with a caring adult changes children’s internal experience and their behavior. One of the ways we speak about a friend who cares is by saying, “She makes time for me.” The teacher didn’t have that extra time in her day. She created it. Here are some ways to make sure we give special time:

Make drop-off transitions sunny. Every morning touching scenes between parents and children take place on our campus. Parents know the happy mood of that send-off sustains children throughout the day.

Turn pick-up time into a comforting reunion. Pick-ups can be trickier. Children often decompress by having meltdowns at the end of the day. This is the time for patience and nurturance. Seeing the parents is the signal they can let down, but being met with tears at the end of the day can be disappointing. Offering understanding and loving downtime together bolsters the child’s resilience.

Enjoy meals. The Spanish word sobremesa means “around the table” but refers to the enjoyable time spent chatting after a meal. Mealtimes can focus on enjoyment of each other rather than just eating.

Create quality time alone with each child. Take turns taking the child on a walk, going to sporting event, going to the store, working in the garden. Set up special time and call it by your child’s name – “This is Laura time.”

Here is an article on making alone time possible for mothers, but it is equally true for dads.

Choosing the Right Books

With next week’s Book Fair, it’s helpful to explore ways to select meaningful books for children. We can’t force children to like reading, but when we read books that we loved growing up aloud to them, our enthusiasm is contagious. The words of classics like Good Night Moon, one the most popular bedtime children’s book of all time, still live in our memories and permeate our enjoyment of enjoyment of saying them.

The benefit of going back to exciting classic chapter books like The Box Car Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner, and Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, is that they are like beloved friends we welcome back into our home, and audio books allow us to listen to them together. Think about favorites from your own childhood and how you can share your delight in them.

Some classic books are landmarks for teaching children about emotions and helping them feel understood. In a recent social skills class in our preschool, child therapist Katrinca Ford let the children act out Where the Wild Things Are, the 1964 bestseller by Maurice Sendak. Each child got a turn to play the hero, Max, who tames the wild monsters who appeared in his room, while he himself feels angry. This classic is a landmark book for helping children learn about self-regulation.

A Baby Sister for Frances, about a raccoon named Frances, also published in 1964, is still one of the most engaging picture books to help a child adjust to a new baby. (For more books that enhance emotional adjustment, see Healing Stories: Picture Books for the Big and Small Changes in a Child's Life, by Walnut Creek children’s therapist Jacqueline Golding, which documents 500 children’s picture books and the ways they can help children cope with the many transitions of life, from starting school to moving to having a relative die.)

Although older favorite books still hold value, the majority of classic books for children omitted whole swaths of the population who couldn’t see themselves represented in literature, which mainly featured Caucasian, neurotypical, middle-class American children with traditional gender identities and no disabilities. You’ll find the Equity & Inclusion Committee’s lists of recommended books representing diversity on our blog.

Children’s literature is always evolving, and staying abreast of new books allows us to find ones that bring important, more inclusive perspectives. One example of that evolution is the Schneider Family Book Award, founded in 2005, which goes to authors and illustrators who best present the experience of disability, mainly in books for middle and high school students.

One of the Schneider-award-winning picture books became an important bestseller, All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything, by Annette Bay Pimentel. It tells the true story of how Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, who wrote the foreword, lifted herself out of her wheelchair at age eight and crawled up the steps of the Capitol, thus beginning her life-long career as disability activist.

This trend-setting book reminds us that one of the most important roles of children’s books is to inspire children not only to read but to learn to discover ways they can contribute their gifts to the world and encourage others to do the same.

* * *

It’s helpful for parents and teachers to stay informed about trends in children’s literature in order to select books that will have value in children’s lives. For example, there has been a fourfold increase in books featuring minorities in children’s literature since 2014. Graphic novels have established a respected role in young people’s literature, and in 2016 a graphic novel from the March trilogy, about John Lewis’s experience in the civil rights movement, won a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Here are some valuable resources:

Finding the Right Book for Your Child from Reading Rockets

Choosing High Quality-Children’s Books from the Carnegie Library

5 Benefits of Reading Graphic Novels from the Markham Public Library, Ontario, Canada

This year’s Book Fair can be instrumental in bringing an accelerated awareness of the best in children’s books and bringing new books into the school environment.