Missing - disabled characters in children's fiction

“Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!” For more than one and a half centuries, poor crippled Tiny Tim has had to stand – or rather sit – as a lonely and tragic symbol of disability in fiction. Cathy Reay discovers that when it comes to children’s books, there's still plenty to be grumpy about

Disney’s decision to re-imagine the wonderful Dickens classic A Christmas Carol in yet another movie remake to be released next month has highlighted the shameful fact that books, which are among the first building blocks in teaching children about society, are still getting disability wrong. Very,
very wrong.

From beloved timeless characters like Tiny Tim, Clara (in Heidi), the Seven Dwarfs and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, to present day fiction written by best-selling authors like Philip Pullman, Jacqueline Wilson and J K Rowling, disability is often grossly mistreated and underrepresented.

One famous example from an earlier book, is in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1910 classic The Secret Garden in which the sick child, Colin, is locked up in the house almost as a secret and his servants are nervous around him. At the end of the story, when he is no longer disabled, Colin finally receives his father’s acceptance and love.

And “authors are still treating disability as something shameful,” explains Penni Friday, a disabled adult and teen fiction writer.

“In Phillip Pullman’s novel The Subtle Knife (1997), a mother has mental health issues and although her son is protective of her it is heavily suggested that his quality of life has lessened because of her illness.”

Helen Aveling, editor of Unseen Childhoods: Disabled Characters in 20th-Century Books for Girls (2009), who is also disabled, says that the characterisation of characters with impairments has actually become less positive. “In the early 20th century there were a greater number of books with disabled characters because, after the First World War, a lot of people were injured.

“But by the 1960s disability was not discussed and therefore not included in books. As girls and boys genres merged into non-gender specific children’s fiction the occasional disabled character became more stereotyped, increasingly 2D and marginalised.”

Disability is either almost entirely ignored or negatively portrayed, as with the rapatious blind Dementors, in J. K. Rowling’s hugely successful Harry Potter series which has sold 400 million copies worldwide; one book for every dozen or so households.

Other than them and Professor Flitwick, a teacher with short-stature, who is a very background character, it is notable that no other characters in the series have a disability.

“You’d think it would be possible for disabled kids to go to Hogwarts and be a wizard but no, they have to stay at home,” says Ju Gosling, book publisher and Potter fan.

Dr Tom Shakespeare, research fellow at Newcastle University, who has short stature, says: “In Harry Potter you take a potion and you’re cured, it’s an interesting message. It is good that Professor Flitwick’s short stature isn’t treated as something to be ashamed of but let’s have a child with a missing limb as part of the main picture here, without their disability being an issue.”

Joyce Dunbar, disabled children’s book author, says: “There are a lot of books which promote the idea of ‘unconditional love’ but the disabled child is not there, not in the picture, not there to be loved at all, unconditional or otherwise. This is beginning to change but there is a long way to go.”

Not least to educate children that have no experience of or direct contact with disabled people, it’s also crucial that disabled children or children with disabled friends or family are able to find reassurance they might need from fiction.

“When I was young I liked it when short people were in books – whenever I would read about dwarves being warriors it made me feel good about the way I was,” says Tom Shakespeare.

“Winifred Arrowsmith, a character in Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s St Bride’s (1923-44) series, resonated so well with me as a child,” adds Helen Aveling. “She had such a fully-rounded characterisation that she really could have been written yesterday, warts and all.”

Initiatives like Scope’s In The Picture campaign have been set up to encourage authors, illustrators and publishers to include disability in their work. The campaign received support from author Jacqueline Wilson and illustrator Quentin Blake, among others, and is regarded by many people in the industry as having helped put disabled characters back in books, particularly for babies and toddlers.

Alexandra Strick, a consultant at national book charity Booktrust and member of the In The Picture steering group,says: “There are certain publishers now that are great at including disability. Childsplay, which publishes baby books, include disabled characters in almost every book they release. They research it well and don’t make it the core of the story, which is fundamental in a child’s understanding that disability does not make you abnormal or different.”

Award-winning author Jacqueline Wilson has confessed that she hasn’t given disability much thought. She told In The Picture: “I really feel I should hide my head in shame… [someone told me] I don’t have enough children and young people with disabilities in my books, and when I do try, I don’t actually get it spot on. But I promise that in the future there will be a book everyone will recommend.“

When disability is featured in books it should be done so in a way that shows the disabled person actively participating in society and focuses more on their personality rather than seeing the disability as their defining characteristic or worse, simply treating it like a disease.

Disabled author Lois Keith writes in her book Take Up Thy Bed and Walk: Death, Disability and Cure in Classic Fiction for Girls (2001): “From the 1850s, the time when novels for girls can be said to have begun, up until very recently (and even now writers kill or cure their disabled characters with worrying ease) there were only two possible ways for writers to resolve the problem of their characters’ inability to walk: cure or death.”

Helen Aveling believes that the uneducated author is partly down to the media’s often ignorant attitude towards disability: “The news media is still prone to using outdated language when covering a story about a person with a disability, so ‘I do not, as they put it, “suffer” from CP’, rather ‘I have CP’.

Until we have a culture where disability is not seen, spoken about or portrayed as being simply negative it will be tiny steps forward.

“There has to be an admission that we exist in society and that authors have to work at not falling back onto clichés and stereotyping.”

There is a handful of authors like Lois Keith, Helen Aveling and Joyce Dunbar who are trying to get disability into children’s literature. But as author Penni Friday points out, disability isn’t an area young people are interested in.

Until hugely successful authors like Jacqueline Wilson and J K Rowling step up and take disability on board, it might be difficult to get children to read anything other than stories about vampires and wizards, for whom being disabled extends as far as wearing a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.

Joyce Dunbar makes a telling point in conclusion: “C.S. Lewis once said: ‘We read to know we are not alone’. A sense of belonging is a fundamental need. Let’s offer this to the disabled child.”

• To find out more about Scope’s In The Picture campaign, visit www.childreninthepicture.org.uk

•• To find out more about Booktrust, visit www.booktrust.org.uk