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The most infuriating finding in my search for disabled children's poets is how often disabled kids outright say, 'I want books that include me.' From the Sixties onwards, there's so much documentation of kids shouting out that they want to see themselves in what they read.
Commenting on The Secret Garden in the Sixties (where Colin can't walk and then is miraculously cured), disabled kids remarked to their teacher, 'they didn't even have any therapy.'
Another kid (in 1995) said of a bestselling author, 'why does he not love people like me in the stories he writes?'
In 2008, Jacqueline Wilson talked about a letter she had received from a child, who had 'written to me before taking me to task about the way I don't have enough children and young people in my books with disabilities.'
And today, disabled teens regularly post in the Suggest Me a Book subreddit, asking for books that include people like them.
Disabled authors are always told that there's no audience for their work, that their work is too niche, that no one wants to read disabled stories. Well, show those publishers the more than 50 year long paper trail I've found of kids just wanting to be included in books.
I can't describe how sad and angry it makes me that disabled kids have been wanting to see themselves in books for over fifty years, and to no avail. The kids I've quoted (from 1962, 1995, 2008 and 2021) have been failed by publishing over and over again, for decades. Grrr
Me @ publishers who made sure disabled kids wouldn't see themselves in books for decades
ID: Gif from a cartoon of a woman staring intensely. As her eyes narrow and her stare intensifies, the gif zooms in on her darkening face.
ID: Gif from a cartoon of a woman staring intensely. As her eyes narrow and her stare intensifies, the gif zooms in on her darkening face.
