impotence), thereby bolstering old stereotypes. Writing in 1977, Barbara Baskin and Karen Harris found that the inclusion of disability in juvenile fiction was frequently used as a literary device to convey conflicting classic binaries (e.g., good vs. In Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse, David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder have discussed an obsession in Western culture to use disability as a prompt and prop in adult literature.
As Nina Christensen has emphasized, such paucity creates a tendency to accept any books with messages about disability, even if they reinforce stereotypes. According to the United States Census Bureau, almost 20 percent of the population has some type of disability, and yet there are relatively few children's books about people with disabilities. If we subscribe to his theory that stories are sites, not only for reading the word and reading the world, but also for imagining a better future, we might turn to picturebooks as a source of inspiration for increasing a child's awareness and appreciation of a range of disability experiences. Disability Lessons from Picturebooks Brazilian educator Paulo Freire taught us much about the transformative power of the word.
The article concludes with recommendations for guiding children's engagement with picturebooks that portray disability. In a review of four recent picturebooks that include protagonists who are blind, comparisons are made among the visual, literary, emotional, and social elements. It examines a variety of picturebooks, first, to reveal messages in the text and illustrations that may overtly and subtly reinforce stereotypes and, second, to investigate how changes in such books may be expanding our understandings of blindness. The article explores ways in which children's picturebooks have traditionally framed our understanding of blindness and visual impairments.
0 kommentar(er)
