6:47pm July 18, 2014

➸ Discussion #7: Warning Flags and Turn-Offs | Disability in Kidlit

disabilityinkidlit:

In these discussion posts, we ask our contributors for their thoughts on various topics. We’ll post one every Friday this month. Today, we asked:

What kinds of words, phrases, or situations used in book or character descriptions send up warning flags for you? We’re thinking of clichés, ableist language–anything related to disability that may be a turn-off.

Snippets of their responses:

Natalie Monroe:  What I hate is when books try to ‘beautify’ disabilities …

Corinne Duyvis: I tend to get turned off “autism books” when the flap copy references the character’s “unique worldview” or starts out listing all the character’s peculiarities …

s.e. smith: … if I’m casually looking at jacket copy, things I tend to look out for are ‘despite her disability’ or ‘overcoming adversity’ or ‘brilliant but [disabled]’ or something along those lines, where characters are separated out from their disabilities …

Kody Keplinger: … any time a [blind] character is introduced in a way that shows us how advanced their other senses are …

[read the full answers—and several other responses—here!]

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