Thank you for this post and for the urge to create believable disabled characters!
I've been working with disabled kids for 10 years now and I find it really hard to find books, stories they can feel absolutely related to. In fact I started writing seriously after talking to a school teacher who said they had no material about disabled kids in their classroom. My first stories were lame, kind of poetic even, lacked conflict. Were more an account of their lives and whereabouts.
But since then, and as I do see disabled kids almost everyday in my life, I've been including them in my stories. Sometimes as main characters, sometimes as secondaries. None of them is magically healed either but he or she comes into terms with his or her abilities and limits.
In the romantic paranormal YA I'm working in right now, heroine is on a wheelchair and there she'll remain. Don't know if I'd ever get published but it won't be because I redeem my disabled characters by healing them magically :).
------------Slight Graceling spoiler----------
Thinking of the books I've read these last months, Po character from Graceling by Kristin Cashore comes to my mind. He is blinded but he gets something even cooler, the awareness of his surroundings all at once. He has to get a grasp of it, but when he does, he doesn't even seem blind. Don't know if you can count that on a disability. Haven't read Fire yet but will, soon I hope! Not sure if they do appear in the sequel though.
Also, I have to agree with Embre's character from Sarah Prineas!
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Thanks!
Date: 2010-05-11 04:04 pm (UTC)I've been working with disabled kids for 10 years now and I find it really hard to find books, stories they can feel absolutely related to. In fact I started writing seriously after talking to a school teacher who said they had no material about disabled kids in their classroom. My first stories were lame, kind of poetic even, lacked conflict. Were more an account of their lives and whereabouts.
But since then, and as I do see disabled kids almost everyday in my life, I've been including them in my stories. Sometimes as main characters, sometimes as secondaries. None of them is magically healed either but he or she comes into terms with his or her abilities and limits.
In the romantic paranormal YA I'm working in right now, heroine is on a wheelchair and there she'll remain. Don't know if I'd ever get published but it won't be because I redeem my disabled characters by healing them magically :).
------------Slight Graceling spoiler----------
Thinking of the books I've read these last months, Po character from Graceling by Kristin Cashore comes to my mind. He is blinded but he gets something even cooler, the awareness of his surroundings all at once. He has to get a grasp of it, but when he does, he doesn't even seem blind. Don't know if you can count that on a disability. Haven't read Fire yet but will, soon I hope! Not sure if they do appear in the sequel though.
Also, I have to agree with Embre's character from Sarah Prineas!