Review: Professional Resource

Hopkins, Carol J. “Developing Positive Attitudes towards the Handicapped through Children’s Books.” The Elementary School Journal Sept. 1980: 34-39.

"Developing Positive Attitudes" is a journal article about the kinds of things teachers and students can do in the classroom to help foster positive attitudes by and about people with disabilities. The most prominent recommendation made by the author of this article is to provide disabled and non-disabled students the opportunities to read stories with positive messages that feature people with disabilities. That way all students will either see themselves or someone in their community in the book, and will be able to learn about disability in a non-threatening way.

Because of the year in which this article was written, the term “handicapped” is used; however, it is meant in the most respectful of manners. That being said, this article helped me think about the benefits of having a well-rounded and multi-cultural classroom library. I feel very strongly that all children should have at least one story that they identify with, and, for students with physical disabilities, that may be a book where the main character uses a wheelchair. But, in the end, it is extremely important for those characters to be “real people”; the story should be about them as people as much as it is about them as people with disabilities. To that end, Hopkins writes that good books to include in a book set dealing with people with disabilities are books where, “The handicapped are realistically portrayed as productive members of society who contribute much to the lives of their families and friends” (38).

Is it possible to have a really well-written book that should be included in a multi-cultural library that does not portray characters with disabilities as “normal” members of society that do everything people without disabilities do? I am curious as to what people think about that notion.