Monthly archive for July 2011

As an author who has written early chapter books and middle grade novels that appeal to reluctant readers, I’ve naturally been curious about these so-called reluctant readers of middle grade fiction. Additionally, my 11 year-old son is definitely a reluctant reader and, as a parent, I’m always on the lookout for books that appeal to physically active boys with a short attention span.

Who are the reluctant readers? Well, I think I know because of my experiences with my middle son. But it’s a very big question. Do all reluctant readers really find books boring and the bottom-of-the-list activity after, let’s say, Youtube, television and getting their teeth cleaned? Well, maybe and maybe not.

It turns out that there’s no such thing as one agreed upon definition of a reluctant reader. That’s because there’s a whole host of very different reasons that children turn away from reading. That’s right. Not all reluctant readers are the same and it’s important to know the difference in order to select books for this sort of middle grade reader.

In her article “Choosing Not To Reader” Kylene Beers, Professor of Reading at the University of Houston breaks reluctant readers into four distinct groups: Dormant Readers, Uncommitted Readers, Unmotivated Readers and Unskilled Readers and contrasts them with the Avid Reader.  Let’s take a look at these five groups of readers.

The Avid Reader—This is someone like myself. At breakfast if you put a camera on me, you’d see this: spoon midway through the air, forgetting to land into my mouth. Why? Because I’m avidly reading the back of the cereal box. Who knew that lists of ingredients: corn flour, honey and riboflavin could be so fascinating? There is no stopping the Avid Reader. Just point their nose and they’ll bump into some writing.

The Dormant Reader—This is a reader who might enjoy reading but doesn’t have time because they are often over-scheduled or it’s not their highest priority. They might have even heard about a certain book as being cool and they actually do want to read it.

The Uncommitted Reader—This kid feels ambivalent towards reading in general. They might want to like reading, but they can’t commit. Like Annie, they are always thinking about tomorrow.

Unmotivated Reader—This reader never reads for pleasure and finds reading a big, fat ugly chore. Getting their braces tightened is probably more fun.

Unskilled Reader—This sort of reader doesn’t possess the skills to decode text.

So, if reluctant readers can’t be lumped together, what does that mean for those of us who are dedicated to attracting these readers? I would say decide which group your reluctant reader falls into before suggesting books that will attract their attention. For example, the Dormant Reader experiencing time restrictions may do well with a novel that they can easily finish such as The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz or a middle grade novel with chapters that read almost like a short story. A collection of short stories such as In the Land of the Land Weenies and Other Misadventures by David Lubar can work very well for this sort of reader. The Unmotivated Reader might enjoy a high concept story such as the Danger Boy series by Mark London Williams or a graphic novel series with bold visuals such as the Bone series by Jeff Smith. While an entire book can be dedicated to this topic, I hope looking at the different categories of reluctant readers will be helpful. Bring on your ideas, because I could sure use them!

Hillary Homzie would even eat cottage cheese if she could figure out how to get reluctant readers to pick up more books. To find out more about Hillary, go to hillaryhomzie.com

Besides being classic tales, what else do Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol have in common? Well, to varying degrees of success, they each portray a child with disabilities. There is Mary Ingalls, Laura’s elder sister, who becomes blind as a result of scarlet fever; there is Colin, the ill tempered and bedridden cousin in The Secret Garden; and of course who can forget the trope of the crutch-using, impoverished but uncomplaining Tiny Tim in the Dickens classic?

Disability studies, a thriving academic field, can be used as a lens to understand portrayals of children with different embodied/cognitive conditions in middle grade literature. One way is to understand the different ways that disability itself is defined. Scholars have suggested there may be at least three historical models/theories of disability:

1. The Metaphysical/Spiritual Model: This is the predominantly historical idea that disability is caused by, or represents, some sort of spiritual failing. Consider, for instance, that in The Secret Garden, the character Colin becomes able to walk once he is befriended by Mary. As soon as his emotional failings (some serious bad attitude) are overcome, so too are his physical disabilities.

2. The Medical Model: This is the notion that disabilities can be primarily understood as physical impairments, and therefore, necessarily have medical solutions. This would be the perspective that all Tiny Tim needs is a visit to an orthopedic surgeon, or a physical therapist.

3. The Social Model: This perspective suggests that we all may have differing physical, emotional, cognitive, etc. abilities, but that environmental and social obstacles – from a lack of wheelchair ramps to prejudicial attitudes – are how disabilities are socially constructed. While Little House is by no means a perfect example of portraying disability, the fact that Mary’s visual impairment is considered in the context of her family, that Laura is often written describing their visual environment to her sister, and Mary, in turn, is an active agent – correcting Laura when she exaggerates, suggests a more social understanding of Mary’s disability.

So where does that leave middle grade novels portraying disability today?

The online “disability scoop”- a source for developmental disability news – suggests that children with disabilities remain underrepresented in children’s literature. Quoting a December 2010 issue of the journal Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, the article suggests that out of 131 winners of the Newbery Medal and Honor, just 31 included a main or supporting character with a disability between 1975 and 2009. According to the article, a similar study in 2006 found that Caldecott Medal and Honor books provided inaccurate views of life with a disability and failed to accurately represent the prevalence of various disabilities.

Even when books do portray children with disabilities, a common critique is that such books sometimes adopt stereotypical ‘movie of the week’ patterns whereby the character with a disability is either overtly extraordinary (Think Rain Man) or pitiably in need of rescue. In the words of disabled poet Mark O’Brien in the documentary of his life, Breathing Lessons, “There are two stereotypes about disabled people: 1. we can do everything. 2. we can’t do anything.”

But there is help out there for writers who would like to portray children with disabilities in their work. Based on various anti-bias curricula, this list of Nine Ways to Evaluate Children’s Books that Address Disability as a Part of Diversity is a great guide for MG writers and readers alike. It asks questions about disabled characters around stereotypes, tokenism, agency and leadership. In other words, in portraying a character with a disability,

• Are stereotypes perpetuated about disablities?
• Is disability a metaphor or an identity? (ie. Tiny Tim’s disability can in many ways be read as a physical manifestation of Dickens’ concerns about the “innocent, suffering poor”, or alternately, Scrooge’s lack of empathy and emotional ‘crippling’.)
• Are children with disabilities portrayed doing things or are things done to them?
• Do they exist as characters in their own right or are they used to ‘teach lessons’ to non-disabled characters?
• What sorts of language does the writer employ – is ‘people first’ language being used in writing disability? (ie. a child with autism instead of an autistic child)
• Is the character with disability only portrayed vis a vis their disabililty – ie. do they have other issues in their life with which they are struggling?
• And finally (although this is more complicated), what is the sociocultural perspective of the author vis a vis disability? While having a disability personally or in one’s family does not guarantee a perfect portrayal, many disability activists use the slogan ‘nothing about us without us’ to suggest that speaking about a community from its outside may be particularly harmful without significant contributions, critique and opinions from within that community.

Some recent award winning MG novels portraying characters with disabilities include:

1. Katherine Erksine’s Mockingbird : 10 yo Caitlin, the protagonist in this National Book Award Winning Book, must deal with grief and loss in the context of her Asperger’s Disease.

2. Jordan Sonnenblick’s After Ever After: 2011 Middle School winner of the Schneider Family Book Award (an award that honors an author or illustrator of a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for a child or adolescent audience), is the story of eighth grader Jeffrey, a leukemia ‘survivor’ who suffers brain and nerve damage after a childhood of intense radiation and chemotherapy.

3. Leslie Connor’s Waiting for Normal: The protagonist of this 2009 Schneider Book Award winner is 12 yo Addie, who is dyslexic, and must confront her new family life after her stepfather’s abandonment.

4. Tracie Vaughn Zimmer’s Reaching for Sun: This 2008 Schneider Award winner is a novel in verse, narrated from the point of view of thirteen year old Josie, a young girl with cerebral palsy.

What are some of your favorite books, or resources for discovering children’s books about disability?

When she’s not writing middle grade novels, Sayantani DasGupta teaches courses on illness and disability narratives at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.