Book Review Reflection

I really enjoyed researching books for this assignment and I have learned so much and gathered so many resources that I wouldn’t otherwise have come into contact with. As a special education major, it just seemed natural that I would choose books that represented people with an array of disabilities, but it definitely was not as easy as I thought it would be. Finding books that came anywhere close to portraying people with a large selection of disabilities in an accurate manner seemed at times impossible. I found many poorly written informational books about children with disabilities. I also found that a common theme with many of the books dealt only with disabilities that were physically visible as opposed to dealing with issues concerning the many types of learning disabilities or speech impairments that a great majority of people within this country have. I discovered that many of the books portrayed those caring for people with disabilities as being burdened by them and I found this to be quite unfortunate. What gives me hope is that for every few negative portrayals I was able to find books that showed characters with special needs in an accurate, authentic positive light.

In reviewing, Rules, Stuck in Neutral, and Joey Pigza Loses Control a common theme that I found were issues surrounding family. I appreciated that within each family, tension was shown between family members, some of which had nothing to do with issues of disabilities at all. Realistically, family dynamics change with the severity of the disability, but for the most part family strife had more to do with the day to day things of life and other issues like conflict among parents that did not concern the children at all. In this aspect, the novels pushed away from the burdening stereotype that many books portray. The exception to this would be Terry Trueman’s Stuck in Neutral simply because Shawn as narrator thought for years that he was the reason for his parents divorce, which was in the end found not to be the case.

In reviewing these books and learning about the authors who wrote them I realized just how much goes on into the writing process. I commend the authors that feel a desire to create books concerning people with special needs, but it is my greatest hope that authors begin critically looking at their texts before letting them reach publication to find and address misconceptions and culturally insensitive aspects within their books. I’d also like to see more racial and cultural diversity within these books as well as a larger variety of disabilities represented. The more I learn about literature representing people with disabilities, the more I would like to author my own novels.